“We must find time to stop and thank the people who make a difference in our lives.”
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John F. Kennedy
“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. ”
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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.”
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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
“Let both sides explore what problems unite us instead of belaboring those problems which divide us.”
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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
“Conformity is the jailer of freedom and the enemy of growth.”
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John F. Kennedy
“A nation which has forgotten the quality of courage which in the past has been brought to public life is not as likely to insist upon or regard that quality in its chosen leaders today - and in fact we have forgotten.”
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John F. Kennedy
“Art is the great democrat, calling forth creative genius from every sector of society, disregarding race or religion or wealth or color”
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John F. Kennedy
“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
“If an American, because his skin is dark, cannot eat lunch in a restaurant open to the public, if he cannot send his children to the best public school available, if he cannot vote for the public officials who represent him, if, in short, he cannot enjoy the full and free life which all of us want, then who among us would be content to have the color of his skin changed and stand in his place? Who among us would then be content with the counsels of patience and delay?”
―
John F. Kennedy
“There is, in addition to a courage with which men die; a courage by which men must live.”
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John F. Kennedy
“For the great enemy of truth is very often not the lie--deliberate, contrived, and dishonest--but the myth--persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic.”
―
John F. Kennedy
“The rights of every man are diminished when the rights of one man are threatened.”
―
John F. Kennedy
