John F. Kennedy (1917-1963)

Quotes

• We stand for freedom. That is our conviction for ourselves; that is our only commitment to others.

• There will always be dissident voices heard in the land expresing opposition without alternatives, finding fault but never favor, perceiving gloom on every side, and seeking influence without responsibility.

• The American, by nature, is optimistic. He is experimental, an inventor and a builder who builds best when called upon to build greatly.

• We don’t see the end of the tunnel but I must say I don’t think it is darker than it was a year ago, and in some ways lighter.

• A man may die, nations may rise and fall, but an idea lives on.

• Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, to assure the survival and success of liberty.

• The ignorance of one voter in a democracy impairs the security of all.

• The ancient Greek definition of happiness was the full use of your powers along lines of excellence.

• Conformity is the jailer of freedom, and the enemy of growth.

• We choose to go to the moon. 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, and the others, too.

• Change is the law of life; and those who look only to the past or the present are certain to miss the future.

• It is our task in our time and in our generation to hand down undiminished to those who come after us, as was handed down to us by those who went before, the natural wealth and beauty which is ours.

• My father always told me that all businessmen were sons of bitches, but I never believed it till now. -- (Comment made 10 April 1962 in reaction to news that U.S. Steel was raising prices by $6 per ton, right after the unions negotiated a modest new contract under pressure from JFK to keep inflation down.)

• All of us have in our veins the exact same percentage of salt in our blood that exists in the ocean, and, therefore, we have salt in our blood, in our sweat, in our tears. We are tied to the ocean. And when we go back to the sea -- whether it is to sail or to watch it -- we are going back from whence we came.

• If someone is going to kill me, they are going to kill me. -- John F. Kennedy (to Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.), 1962.

• If I do the right kind of a job, I don't know whether I am going to be here four years from now. -- John F. Kennedy (to Richard M. Nixon, right after the Bay of Pigs invasion, 1961).

• If I am to die, this is the week for it. -- John F. Kennedy (to aide John McClone in response to a CIA report about rumours of an assassination plot), June 1962.

• Who can tell who will be the President a year from now? -- John F. Kennedy, speaking to the president of Harvard about why he did not want to delay signing documents relating to a future JFK Presidential Library, 2 October 1963.

• Victory has a thousand fathers; defeat is an orphan.

• This is the night to go to the theatre, like Abraham Lincoln.