“We are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant facts, foreign ideas, alien philosophies, and competitive values. For a nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people."
―
John F. Kennedy
“The problems of the world cannot possibly be solved by skeptics or cynics whose horizons are limited by the obvious realities. We need men who can dream of things that never were.”
―
John F. Kennedy
“We, in this country, in this generation, are - by destiny rather than by choice - the watchmen on the walls of world freedom.”
―
John F. Kennedy
“I look forward to an America which will not be afraid of grace and beauty”
―
John F. Kennedy
“There are costs and risks to a program of action, but they are far less than the long range risks and costs of comfortable inaction.”
―
John F. Kennedy
“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
“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
“Those who foolishly sought power by riding the back of the tiger ended up inside”
―
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
“For we are opposed around the world by a monolithic and ruthless conspiracy that relies primarily on covert means for expanding its sphere of influence -- on infiltration instead of invasion, on subversion instead of elections, on intimidation instead of free choice, on guerrillas by night instead of armies by day. It is a system which has conscripted vast human and material resources into the building of a tightly knit, highly efficient machine that combines military, diplomatic, intelligence, economic, scientific and political operations. Its preparations are concealed, not published. Its mistakes are buried, not headlined. Its dissenters are silenced, not praised. No expenditure is questioned, no rumor is printed, no secret is revealed. It conducts the Cold War, in short, with a war-time discipline no democracy would ever hope or wish to match.”
―
John F. Kennedy
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable."
―
John F. Kennedy
