“A man may die, nations may rise and fall, but an idea lives on.”
―
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
“If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich.
―
John F. Kennedy
“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
“And finally, at age seventy, having distinguished himself as a brilliant Secretary of State, an independent President and an eloquent member of Congress, he was to record somberly that his “whole life has been a succession of disappointments. I can scarcely recollect a single instance of success in anything that I ever undertook.”
―
John F. Kennedy
“Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.”
―
John F. Kennedy
“War will exist until that distant day when the conscientious objector enjoys the same reputation and prestige that the warrior does today.”
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John F. Kennedy
“If more politicians knew poetry, and more poets knew politics, I am convinced the world would be a little better place in which to live.”
―
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
“Above all, we are coming to understand that the arts incarnate the creativity of a free people. When the creative impulse cannot flourish, when it cannot freely select its methods and objects, when it is deprived of spontaneity, then society severs the root of art.”
―
John F. Kennedy
“Our progress as a nation can be not swifter than our progress in education.”
―
John F. Kennedy
“I can imagine no more rewarding a career. And any man who may be asked in this century what he did to make his life worthwhile, I think can respond with a good deal of pride and satisfaction: 'I served in the United States Navy.”
―
John F. Kennedy
“It is not only the unit vote for the Presidency we are talking about, but a whole solar system of governmental power. If it is proposed to change the balance of power of one of the elements of the solar system, it is necessary to consider the others.”
―
John F. Kennedy
“The life of the arts, far from being an interruption, a distraction, in the life of the nation, is close to the center of a nation's purpose - and is a test to the quality of a nation's civilization.”
―
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
