“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
“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
“Just because we cannot see clearly the end of the road, that is no reason for not setting out on the essential journey.”
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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
“Today our concern must be with the future. For the world is changing. The old era is ending. The old ways will not do.”
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John F. Kennedy
“Perhaps the twentieth-century Senator is not called upon to risk his entire future on one basic issue in the manner of Edmund Ross or Thomas Hart Benton. Perhaps our modern acts of political courage do not arouse the public in the manner that crushed the career of Sam Houston and John Quincy Adams. Still, when we realize that a newspaper that chooses to denounce a Senator today can reach many thousand times as many voters as could be reached by all of Daniel Webster’s famous and articulate detractors put together, these stories of twentieth-century political courage have a drama, an excitement—and an inspiration—all their own.”
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John F. Kennedy
“The supreme reality of our time is the vulnerability of our planet. ”
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John F. Kennedy
“The one unchangeable certainty is that nothing is certain or unchangeable.”
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John F. Kennedy
“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.
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John F. Kennedy
“In the years since man unlocked the power stored up within the atom, the world has made progress, halting, but effective, toward bringing that power under human control. The challenge may be our salvation. As we begin to master the destructive potentialities of modern science, we move toward a new era in which science can fulfill its creative promise and help bring into existence the happiest society the world has ever known.”
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John F. Kennedy
“Our problems are manmade--therefore, they can be solved by man. And man can be as big as he wants. No problem of human destiny is beyond human beings. Man's reason and spirit have often solved the seemingly unsolvable--and we believe they can do it again.”
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John F. Kennedy
“We must never forget that art is not a form of propaganda; it is a form of truth.”
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John F. Kennedy
“I love her deeply and have done everything for her. I’ve no feeling of letting her down because I’ve put her foremost in everything.”
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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...Our way of life is under attack. Those who make themselves our enemy are advancing around the globe...no war ever posed a greater threat to our security. If you are awaiting a finding of "clear and present danger," then I can only say that the danger has never been more clear and its presence has never been more imminent...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.”
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John F. Kennedy
