“We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win.”
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John F. Kennedy
“[Public] libraries should be open to all—except the censor.
―
John F. Kennedy
“Liberty without Learning is always in peril and Learning without Liberty is always in vain.”
―
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.
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John F. Kennedy
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible, make violent revolution inevitable”
―
John F. Kennedy
“A nation reveals itself not only by the men it produces but also by the men it honors, the men it remembers.”
―
John F. Kennedy
“Those who foolishly sought power by riding the back of the tiger ended up inside”
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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.”
―
John F. Kennedy
“Change is the law of life, and those who look only to the past or present are certain to miss the future.”
―
John F. Kennedy
“If art is to nourish the roots of our culture, society must set the artist free to follow his vision wherever it takes him.”
―
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.”
―
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
“The very word 'secrecy' is repugnant in a free and open society; and we are as a people inherently and historically opposed to secret societies, to secret oaths, and to secret proceedings”
―
John F. Kennedy
“I believe in human dignity as the source of national purpose, in human liberty as the source of national action, in the human heart as the source of national compassion... for liberalism is not so much a party creed as it is an attitude of mind and heart, a faith in man's ability through the experiences of his reason and judgment to increase for himself and his fellow men the amount of justice and freedom and brotherhood which all human life deserves.”
―
John F. Kennedy
