Best John F. Kennedy Quotes

And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country. My fellow citizens of the world: ask not what America will do for you, but what, together, we can do for the freedom of man.

Forgive your enemies, but never forget their names.

Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.

If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich.

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

If anyone is crazy enough to want to kill a president of the United States, he can do it. All he must be prepared to do is give his life for the president s.

The margin is narrow, but the responsibility is clear.

Efforts and courage are not enough without purpose and direction.

This country cannot afford to be materially rich and spiritually poor.

World peace, like community peace, does not require that each man love his neighbor -- it requires only that they live together with mutual tolerance, submitting their disputes to a just and peaceful settlement.

I think this is the most extraordinary collection of talent, of human knowledge, that has ever been gathered together at the White House, with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone.

The supreme reality of our time is the vulnerability of this planet.

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 the success of liberty.

We are under exercised as a nation. We look instead of play. We ride instead of walk. Our existence deprives us of the minimum of physical activity essential for healthy living.

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

It is time for a new generation of leadership, to cope with new problems and new opportunities. For there is a new world to be won.

There are risks and costs to a program of action, but they are far less than the long-range risks and costs of comfortable inaction.

We prefer world law, in the age of self-determination, to world war in the age of mass extermination.

I look forward to an America which will reward achievement in the arts as we reward achievement in business or statecraft. I look forward to an America which will steadily raise the standards of artistic accomplishment and which will steadily enlarge cultural opportunities for all of our citizens. And I look forward to an America which commands respect throughout the world not only for its strength but for its civilization as well.

But peace does not rest in the charters and covenants alone. It lies in the hearts and minds of all people. So let us not rest all our hopes on parchment and on paper, let us strive to build peace, a desire for peace, a willingness to work for peace in the hearts and minds of all of our people. I believe that we can. I believe the problems of human destiny are not beyond the reach of human beings.

A young man who does not have what it takes to perform military service is not likely to have what it takes to make a living.

The time to repair the roof is when the sun is shinning.

The energy, the faith, the devotion which we bring this endeavor will light our bounty and all who serve it, and the glow from that fire can truly light the world.

Peace is a daily, a weekly, a monthly process, gradually changing opinions, slowly eroding old barriers, quietly building new structures.

We must use time as a tool, not as a couch.

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.

In the long history of the world, only a few generations have been granted the role of defending freedom in its hour of maximum danger. I do not shrink from this responsibility -- I welcome it.

We hold the view that the people make the best judgment in the long run.

We dare not tempt them with weakness. For only when our arms are sufficient beyond doubt can we be certain beyond doubt that they will never be employed.

Most of us are conditioned for many years to have a political viewpoint -- Republican or Democratic, liberal, conservative, or moderate. The fact of the matter is that most of the problems that we now face are technical problems, are administrative problems. They are very sophisticated judgments, which do not lend themselves to the great sort of passionate movements which have stirred this country so often in the past. -- They deal with questions which are now beyond the comprehension of most men.

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.

Our progress as a nation can be no swifter than our progress in education. The human mind is our fundamental resource.

Our problems are man-made, therefore they may be solved by man. No problem of human destiny is beyond human beings.

I have just received the following wire from my generous Daddy. It says, Dear Jack: Don't buy a single vote more than is necessary. I'll be damned if I am going to pay for a landslide.

Our growing softness, our increasing lack of physical fitness, is a menace to our security.

I never know when I press these whether I am going to blow up Massachusetts or start the project.

When we got into office, the thing that surprised me most was to find that things were just as bad as we'd been saying they were.

The world is very different now. For man holds in his hands the power to abolish all forms of human poverty and all forms of human life.

Let us never negotiate out of fear. But let us never fear to negotiate.

I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolutewhere no Catholic prelate would tell the President how to act, and no Protestant minister would tell his parishioners for whom to votewhere no church or church school is granted any public funds or political preferenceand 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. I believe in an America that is officially neither Catholic, Protestant nor Jewishwhere no public official either requests or accepts instructions on public policy from the Pope, the National Council of Churches or any other ecclesiastical sourcewhere no religious body seeks to impose its will directly or indirectly upon the general populace or the public acts of its officialsand where religious liberty is so indivisible that an act against one church is treated as an act against all. For while this year it may be a Catholic against whom the finger of suspicion is pointed, in other years it has been, and may someday be again, a Jewor a Quakeror a Unitarianor a Baptist. It was Virginias harassment of Baptist preachers, for example, that helped lead to Jeffersons statute of religious freedom. Today I may be the victimbut tomorrow it may be youuntil the whole fabric of our harmonious society is ripped at a time of great national peril. Finally, I believe in an America where religious intolerance will someday endwhere all men and all churches are treated as equalwhere every man has the same right to attend or not attend the church of his choicewhere there is no Catholic vote, no anti-Catholic vote, no bloc voting of any kindand where Catholics, Protestants and Jews, at both the lay and pastoral level, will refrain from those attitudes of disdain and division which have so often marred their works in the past, and promote instead the American ideal of brotherhood. That is the kind of America in which I believe. And it represents the kind of Presidency in which I believea great office that must neither be humbled by making it the instrument of any one religious group nor tarnished by arbitrarily withholding its occupancy from the members of any one religious group. 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.

Many years ago the great British explorer George Mallory, who was to die on Mount Everest, was asked why did he want to climb it. He said Because it is there. Well, space is there, and were going to climb it, and the moon and the planets are there, and new hopes for knowledge and peace are there.

The farmer is the only man in our economy who buys everything at retail, sells everything at wholesale, and pays the freight both ways.

Once you say you're going to settle for second, that's what happens to you in life.

For only when our arms are sufficient beyond doubt can we be certain beyond doubt that they will never be employed.

Let us think of education as the means of developing our greatest abilities, because in each of us there is a private hope and dream which, fulfilled, can be translated into benefit for everyone and greater strength for our nation.

Don't buy a single vote more than necessary. I'll be damned if I'm going to pay for a landslide.

In the past, those who foolishly sought power by riding on the back of the tiger ended up inside.

When power leads man towards arrogance, poetry reminds him of his limitations. When power narrows the area of man's concern, poetry reminds him of the richness and diversity of existence. When power corrupts, poetry cleanses.

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