“Just because we cannot see clearly the end of the road, that is no reason for not setting out on the essential journey.”
―
John F. Kennedy
“A man may die, nations may rise and fall, but an idea lives on. Ideas have endurance without death.”
―
John F. Kennedy
“Terror is not a new weapon. Throughout history it has been used by those who could not prevail, either by persuasion or example. But inevitably they fail, either because men are not afraid to die for a life worth living, or because the terrorists themselves came to realize that free men cannot be frightened by threats, and that aggression would meet its own response. And it is in the light of that history that every nation today should know, be he friend or foe, that the United States has both the will and the weapons to join free men in standing up to their responsibilities.”
―
John F. Kennedy
“The one unchangeable certainty is that nothing is certain or unchangeable.”
―
John F. Kennedy
“If we fail to meet the challenge of either Soviet or Western imperialism, then no amount of foreign aid, no aggrandizement of armaments, no new pacts or doctrines or high-level conferences can prevent further setbacks to our course and to our security.”
―
John F. Kennedy
“The ignorance of one voter in a democracy impairs the security of all.”
―
John F. Kennedy
“Great crisis produce great men and great deeds of courage.”
―
John F. Kennedy
“We shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and success of liberty”
―
John F. Kennedy
“Today our concern must be with the future. For the world is changing. The old era is ending. The old ways will not do.”
―
John F. Kennedy
“Let the word go forth from this time and place, to friend and foe alike, that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans, born in this century, tempered by war, disciplined by a hard and bitter peace, proud of our ancient heritage, and unwilling to witness or permit the slow undoing of those human rights to which this nation has always been committed, and to which we are committed today at home and around the world. Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty.”
―
John F. Kennedy
“I'm shadowboxing in a match the shadow is always going to win. (as a young man battling his deceased brother's heroic legacy)”
―
John F. Kennedy
“I don't think the intelligence reports are all that hot. Some days I get more out of the New York Times.”
―
John F. Kennedy
“Perhaps the twentieth-century Senator is not called upon to risk his entire future on one basic issue in the manner of Edmund Ross or Thomas Hart Benton. Perhaps our modern acts of political courage do not arouse the public in the manner that crushed the career of Sam Houston and John Quincy Adams. Still, when we realize that a newspaper that chooses to denounce a Senator today can reach many thousand times as many voters as could be reached by all of Daniel Webster’s famous and articulate detractors put together, these stories of twentieth-century political courage have a drama, an excitement—and an inspiration—all their own.”
―
John F. Kennedy
“All this will not be finished in the first one hundred days. Nor will it be finished in the first one thousand days . . .nor even perhaps in our lifetime on this planet. But let us begin.”
―
John F. Kennedy
