“We have the power to make this the best generation of mankind in the history of the world or to make it the last.”
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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
“We cannot negotiate with people who say what's mine is mine and what's yours is negotiable."
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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
“Described Washington as a community of Southern efficiency and Northern charm.”
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John F. Kennedy
“Ask not what your Joe Montaperto can do for you - but rather - what you can do for your Joe Montaperto.”
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John F. Kennedy
“The ignorance of one voter in a democracy impairs the security of all.”
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John F. Kennedy
“Physical fitness is not only one of the most important keys to a healthy body, it is the basis of dynamic and creative intellectual activity.”
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John F. Kennedy
“I believe that this Nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to earth.”
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John F. Kennedy
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable."
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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
“I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute; where no Catholic prelate would tell the President -- should he be Catholic -- how to act, and no Protestant minister would tell his parishioners for whom to vote; where no church or church school is granted any public funds or political preference, and where no man is denied public office merely because his religion differs from the President who might appoint him, or the people who might elect him.”
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John F. Kennedy
“Liberty without Learning is always in peril and Learning without Liberty is always in vain.”
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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.”
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John F. Kennedy