“So, let us not be blind to our differences--but let us also direct attention to our common interests and to the means by which those differences can be resolved. And if we cannot end now our differences, at least we can help make the world safe for diversity. For, in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children's future. And we are all mortal.”
―
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
“Ask not what your Joe Montaperto can do for you - but rather - what you can do for your Joe Montaperto.”
―
John F. Kennedy
“When written in Chinese, the word "crisis" is composed of two characters. One represents danger and the other represents opportunity.”
―
John F. Kennedy
“We have the power to make this the best generation of mankind in the history of the world or to make it the last.”
―
John F. Kennedy
“The ignorance of one voter in a democracy impairs the security of all.”
―
John F. Kennedy
“Conformity is the jailer of freedom and the enemy of growth.”
―
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
“Tolerance implies no lack of commitment to one's own beliefs. Rather
it condemns the oppression or persecution of others.”
―
John F. Kennedy
“I really don't know why it is that all of us are so committed to the sea, except I think it's because in addition to the fact that the sea changes, and the light changes, and ships change, it's because we all came from the sea. And it is an interesting biological fact that all of us have in our veins the exact same percentage of salt in our blood that exists in the ocean, and, therefore, we have salt in our blood, in our sweat, in our tears. We are tied to the ocean. And when we go back to the sea - whether it is to sail or to watch it - we are going back from whence we came.
―
John F. Kennedy
“Let both sides explore what problems unite us instead of belaboring those problems which divide us.”
―
John F. Kennedy
“The new and terrible dangers which man has created can only be controlled by man.”
―
John F. Kennedy
“There is inherited wealth in this country and also inherited poverty.”
―
John F. Kennedy
