“If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich.
―
John F. Kennedy
“Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or the present are certain to miss the future.
―
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
“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
“People often tell me I could be a great man. I'd rather be a good man.”
―
John F. Kennedy
“Those who foolishly sought power by riding the back of the tiger ended up inside”
―
John F. Kennedy
“The 1930s, Kennedy said, 'taught us a clear lesson; aggressive conduct, if allowed to go unchecked and unchallenged, ultimately leads to war.”
―
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. A man does what he must - in spite of personal consequences, in spite of obstacles and dangers and pressures - and that is the basis of all morality.”
―
John F. Kennedy
“Let us not seek to fix the blame for the past, let us accept our own responsibility for the future.”
―
John F. Kennedy
“Woodrow Wilson, for example, shortly before his death, buffeted by the Senate in his efforts on behalf of the League of Nations and the Versailles Treaty, rejected the suggestion that he seek a seat in the Senate from New Jersey, stating: “Outside of the United States, the Senate does not amount to a damn. And inside the United States the Senate is mostly despised; they haven’t had a thought down there in fifty years.” There are many who agreed with Wilson in 1920, and some who might agree with those sentiments today.
―
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
“As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words, but to live by them.
―
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
“There is nothing in the record of the past two years when both Houses of Congress have been controlled by the Republican Party which can lead any person to believe that those promises will be fulfilled in the future. They follow the Hitler line - no matter how big the lie; repeat it often enough and the masses will regard it as truth.”
―
John F. Kennedy
“What makes journalist so fascinating, and biography so interesting [is] the struggle to answer that single question: 'What's he like?”
―
John F. Kennedy
