“War and hunger and ignorance and despair know no religious barriers.”
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John F. Kennedy
“Of course, it would be much easier if we could all continue to think in traditional political patterns—of liberalism and conservatism, as Republicans and Democrats, from the viewpoint of North and South, management and labor, business and consumer or some equally narrow framework. It would be more comfortable to continue to move and vote in platoons, joining whomever of our colleagues are equally enslaved by some current fashion, raging prejudice or popular movement. But today this nation cannot tolerate the luxury of such lazy political habits. Only the strength and progress and peaceful change that come from independent judgment and individual ideas—and even from the unorthodox and the eccentric—can enable us to surpass that foreign ideology that fears free thought more than it fears hydrogen bombs. We shall need compromises in the days ahead, to be sure. But these will be, or should be, compromises of issues, not of principles. We can compromise our political positions, but not ourselves.”
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John F. Kennedy
“The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie — deliberate, contrived and dishonest — but the myth — persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic.”
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John F. Kennedy
“My fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.”
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John F. Kennedy
“Freedom is being allowed to think your own thoughts and live your own life.”
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John F. Kennedy
“It is not always easy. Your successes are unheralded -- your failures are trumpeted. I sometimes have that feeling myself."
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John F. Kennedy
“What makes journalist so fascinating, and biography so interesting [is] the struggle to answer that single question: 'What's he like?”
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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.
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John F. Kennedy
“People often tell me I could be a great man. I'd rather be a good man.”
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John F. Kennedy
“Let both sides explore what problems unite us instead of belaboring those problems which divide us.”
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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.”
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John F. Kennedy
“Ask not what your Joe Montaperto can do for you - but rather - what you can do for your Joe Montaperto.”
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John F. Kennedy
“Truth is a tyrant-the only tyrant to whom we can give our allegiance. The service of truth is a matter of heroism.”
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John F. Kennedy
“The courage of life is often a less dramatic spectacle than the courage of a final moment; but it is no less a magnificent mixture of triumph and tragedy.”
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John F. Kennedy
