John F. Kennedy Quotations | Page 2

We believe that if men have the talent to invent new machines that put men out of work, they have the talent to put those men back to work.

Let the word go forth from this time and place, to friend and foe alike, that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans - born in this century, tempered by war, disciplined by a hard and bitter peace.

I am sorry to say that there is too much point to the wisecrack that life is extinct on other planets because their scientists were more advanced than ours.

America has tossed its cap over the wall of space.

Washington is a city of Southern efficiency and Northern charm.

I believe in a president whose religious views are his own private affair, neither imposed by him upon the nation, or imposed by the nation upon him as a condition to holding that office.

It might be said now that I have the best of both worlds. A Harvard education and a Yale degree.

The United States has to move very fast to even stand still.

I look forward to a future in which our country will match its military strength with our moral restraint, its wealth with our wisdom, its power with our purpose.

The great enemy of truth is very often not the lie--deliberate, contrived and dishonest--but the myth--persistent, persuasive and unrealistic. Too often we hold fast to the cliches of our forebears. We subject all facts to a prefabricated set of interpretations. We enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought.

In a time of turbulence and change, it is more true than ever that knowledge is power.

Written in Chinese, the word crisis, is composed of two characters. One represents danger and the other represent opportunity.

There is always inequity in life. Some men are killed in a war, and some men are wounded, and some men are stationed in the Antarctic and some are stationed in San Francisco. It's very hard in military or personal life to assure complete equality. Life

We will be playing this New Year's Eve at the American Legion where I first played with my father and several others on New Year's Eve 50 years ago. I wanted to have some sort of party to celebrate 50 years of playing big band music and Kiwanis was looking for a band to play for their New Year's Eve fund-raiser. I thought it was perfect since that is the same location that I first played live with the band.

Do you realize the responsibility I carry? I'm the only person between Nixon and the White House.

For of those to whom much is given, much is required.

The day before my inauguration President Eisenhower told me, ''You'll find that no easy problems ever come to the President of the United States. If they are easy to solve, somebody else has solved them.'' I found that hard to believe, but now I know it is true.

It shall be the policy of this nation to regard any nuclear missile launched from Cuba as an attack by the Soviet Union on the United States.

Richard Cromwell was not fit to wear the mantle of his uncle.

I am fully aware of the fact that the Democratic Party, by nominating someone of my faith, has taken on what many regard as a new and hazardous risk.

A tired nation, said David Lloyd George, is a Tory nation, and the United States today cannot afford to be either tired or Tory.

We set sail on this new sea because there is new knowledge to be gained, and new rights to be won, and they must be won and used for the progress of all people. For space science, like nuclear science and technology, has no conscience of its own. Whether it will become a force for good or ill depends on man, and only if the United States occupies a position of preeminence can we help decide whether this new ocean will be a sea of peace or a new terrifying theater of war.

The science of weapons and war has made us all one world and one human race with one common destiny.

I believe in an America where religious intolerance will someday end... where every man has the same right to attend or not attend the church of his choice.

In America there must be only citizens, not divided by grade, first and second, but citizens, east, west, north, and south.

We shall be judged more by what we do at home than what we preach abroad.

Our privileges can be no greater than our obligations. The protection of our rights can endure no longer than the performance of our responsibilities.

I know there is a God - I see the storm coming and I see his hand in it - if he has a place then I am ready - we see the hand.

Intelligence and skill can only function at the peak of their capacity when the body is healthy and strong.

It is true that my predecessor did not object, as I do, to pictures of one's golf skill in action. But neither, on the other hand, did he ever bean a Secret Serviceman.

Any danger spot is tenable if men, brave men, will make it so.

Economic growth without social progress lets the great majority of the people remain in poverty, while a privileged few reap the benefits of rising abundance.

I want every American to be free to stand up for his rights, even if sometimes he has to sit down for them.

Malthus argued a century and a half ago that man, by using up all his available resources, would forever press on the limits of subsistence, thus condemning humanity to an indefinite future of misery and poverty. We can now begin to hope and, I believe, know that Malthus was expressing not a law of nature, but merely the limitation then of scientific and social wisdom. The truth or falsity of his prediction will depend now, with the tools we have, on our own actions, now and in the years to come.

There is, of course, a legitimate argument for some limitation upon immigration. We no longer need settlers for virgin lands, and our economy is expanding more slowly than in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

For without belittling the courage with which men have died, we should not forget those acts of courage with which men have lived.

Moral courage is more a rare commodity than bravery in a battle or great intelligence.

The poet and the politician have this in common: their greatness depends on the courage with which they face the challenges of life.

There are no 'white' or 'coloured' signs on the foxholes or graveyards of battle.

This is one country. It has become one country because all of us and all the people who came here had an equal chance to develop their talents. We cannot say to ten percent of the population that you can't have that right; that your children cannot have the chance to develop whatever talents they have; that the only way that they are going to get their rights is to go in the street and demonstrate. I think we owe them and we owe ourselves a better country than that.

In giving rights to others which belong to them, we give rights to ourselves and to our country

The great revolution in the history of man, past, present and future, is the revolution of those determined to be free.

Let us not seek the Republican answer.

We are inclined to think that if we watch a football game or a baseball game, we have taken part in it.

If we could ever competitively, at a cheap rate, get fresh water from saltwater, ..(this) would be in the long-range interests of humanity which could really dwarf any other scientific accomplishments.

We do not want an official state church. If ninety-nine percent of the population were Catholics, I would still be opposed to it. I do not want civil power combined with religious power. I want to make it clear that I am committed as a matter of deep personal conviction to separation.

When you have seven percent unemployed, you have ninety-three percent working.

The efforts of governments alone will never be enough. In the end, the people must choose and the people must help themselves.

We live in a hemisphere whose own revolution has given birth to the most powerful force of the modern age; the search for freedom and self fulfillment of man.

If you look throughout human history ... the central epiphany of every religious tradition always occurs in the wilderness.

Change is the law of life.

Automation does not need to be our enemy. I think machines can make life easier for men, if men do not let the machines dominate them.

While there are many who would say that the race to the moon was hardly green, many others have noted that the photographs brought back from Apollo 8 created the environmental movement. "They fuelled an awareness of the vulnerability of the Earth which still resonates with us today and shapes our behaviour." It was Kennedy who started it all with his pledge:

I not only could not stifle controversy among your readers.. I welcome it. This Administration intends to be candid about its errors; for as a wise man once said: "An error does not become a mistake until you refuse to correct it." We intend to accept full responsibility for our errors; and we expect you to point them out when we miss them.

A wall is a hell of a lot better than a war.

Freedom is indivisible, and when one man is enslaved, all are not free. When all are free, then we can look forward to that day when this city will be joined as one and this country and this great Continent of Europe in a peaceful and hopeful globe. When that day finally comes, as it will, the people of West Berlin can take sober satisfaction in the fact that they were in the front lines for almost two decades. All free men, wherever they may live, are citizens of Berlin, and, therefore, as a free man, I take pride in the words Ich bin ein Berliner.

There are many people in the world who really don't understand, or say they don't, what is the great issue between the free world and the Communist world. Let them come to Berlin. There are some who say that communism is the wave of the future. Let them come to Berlin. And there are some who say in Europe and elsewhere we can work with the Communists. Let them come to Berlin. And there are even a few who say that it is true that communism is an evil system, but it permits us to make economic progress. Lass' sie nach Berlin kommen. Let them come to Berlin.

In free society art is not a weapon...Artists are not engineers of the soul.

And so it is that I carry with me from this State to that high and lonely office to which I now succeed more than fond memories and fast friendships. The enduring qualities of Massachusettsthe common threads woven by the Pilgrim and the Puritan, the fisherman and the farmer, the Yankee and the immigrantwill not be and could not be forgotten in the Nations Executive Mansion. They are an indelible part of my life, my convictions, my view of the past, my hopes for the future.

All my life Ive known better than to depend on the experts. How could I have been so stupid, to let them go ahead?

I look forward to an America which will not be afraid of grace and beauty.

The great battleground for the defense and expansion of freedom today is the whole southern half of the globe... the lands of the rising peoples. Their revolution is the greatest in human history. They seek an end to injustice, tyranny and exploitation. More than an end, they seek a beginning.

[War] can no longer be of concern to great powers alone.

There is always inequity in life. Some men are killed in war and some men are wounded; some men never leave the country, some men are stationed in the Antarctic and some are stationed in San Francisco. It's very hard in military or in personal life to assure complete equality. Life is unfair.

Suspicion on one side breeds suspicion on the other, and new weapons beget counter-weapons.

The problem of power is how to achieve its responsible use rather than its irresponsible and indulgent use; of how to get men of power to live for the public rather than off the public.

The new and terrible dangers which man has created can only be controlled by man.

Political sovereignty is but a mockery without the means of meeting poverty and illiteracy and disease. Self-determination is but a slogan if the future holds no hope.

The torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans, born in this century... unwilling to witness or permit the slow undoing of those human rights to which this nation has always been committed, and to which we are committed today.

You can milk a cow the wrong way once and still be a farmer, but vote the wrong way on a water tower and you can be in trouble.

As science, of necessity, becomes more involved with itself, so also, of necessity, it becomes more international. I am impressed to know that of the 670 members of this Academy

A Canadian newspaperman said yesterday that this is the President's "Easter egghead roll on the White House lawn." I want to deny that!

In our democracy every young person should have an equal opportunity to obtain a higher education, regardless of his station in life or financial means.

Student loans have been helpful to many. But they offer neither incentive nor assistance to those students who, by reason of family or other obligations, are unable or unwilling to go deeper into debt. ... It is, moreover, only prudent economic and social policy for the public to share part of the costs of the long period of higher education for those whose development is essential to our national economic and social well-being. All of us share in the benefits - all should share in the costs.

Since the time of the ancient Greeks, we have felt that there was a close relationship between a strong vital mind and physical fitness.

For a subject worked and reworked so often in novels, motion pictures, and television, American Indians remain probably the least understood and most misunderstood Americans of us all.

There is no city in the United States in which I can get a warmer welcome and fewer votes than Columbia, Ohio.

Whether they be young in spirit, or young in age, the members of the Democratic Party must never lose that youthful zest for new ideas and for a better world, which has made us great.

There is, in addition to a courage with which men die; a courage by which men must live.

Art is the great democrat, calling forth creative genius from every sector of society, disregarding race or religion or wealth or color

But wherever we are, we must all, in our daily lives, live up to the age-old faith that peace and freedom walk together. In too many of our cities today, the peace is not secure because freedom is incomplete." (John F. Kennedy, June 10, 1963, American University speech)

And is not peace, in the last analysis, basically a matter of human rights -- the right to live out our lives without fear of devastation – the right to breathe air as nature provided it -- the right of future generations to a healthy existence?" (John F. Kennedy, June 10, 1963, American University speech)

No American is ever made better off by pulling a fellow American down, and all of us are made better off whenever any one of us is made better off.

To those peoples in the huts and villages of half the globe struggling to break the bonds of mass misery, we pledge our best efforts to help them help themselves, for whatever period is required - not because the Communists may be doing it, not because we seek their votes, but because it is right. If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich.

I was born an American, I live like an American, I will die an American.

So let us begin anew - remembering on both sides that civility is not a sign of weakness, and sincerity is always subject to proof

The very word Secrecy is repugnant in a free and open society.

I'm an idealist without illusions.

A journey to Thousand miles begins with one step

Every inhabitant of this planet must contemplate the day when this planet may no longer be habitable .. The weapons of war must be abolished before they abolish us.

What church I go to on Sunday, what dogma of the Catholic Church I believe in, is my business; and whatever faith any other American has is his business.

All students, members of the faculty, and public officials in both Mississippi and the Nation will be able, it is hoped, to return to their normal activities with full confidence in the integrity of American law. This is as it should be, for our Nation is founded on the principle that observance of the law is the eternal safeguard of liberty and defiance of the law is the surest road to tyranny.

The mere absence of war is not peace.

While we shall never weary in the defense of freedom, neither shall we ever abandon the pursuit of peace.

The essence of Vanderbilt is still learning, the essence of its outlook is still liberty, and liberty and learning will be and must be the touchstones of Vanderbilt University and of any free university in this country or the world. I say two touchstones, yet they are almost inseparable, inseparable if not indistinguishable, for liberty without learning is always in peril, and learning without liberty is always in vain.

Only an educated and informed people will be a free people.

And this Nation, for all its hopes and all its boasts, will not be fully free until all its citizens are free.

Aggressive conduct, if allowed to go unchecked and unchallenged, ultimately leads to war.

I speak of peace, therefore, as the necessary rational end of rational men. I realize the pursuit of peace is not as dramatic as the pursuit of war... But we have no more urgent task.

So let us persevere. Peace need not be impracticable, and war need not be inevitable. By defining our goal more clearly, by making it seem more manageable and less remote, we can help all peoples to see it, to draw hope from it, and to move irresistibly toward it.