Inspiring Quotes by John F. Kennedy
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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.

There can be no progress if people have no faith in tomorrow.

No sane society chooses to commit national suicide.

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

A tax cut means higher family income and higher business profits and a balanced federal budget.

The rights of man come not from the generosity of the state but from the hand of God.

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

The rights of every man are diminished when the rights of one man are threatened.

The high office of the President has been used to foment a plot to destroy the American's freedom and before I leave office, I must inform the citizens of this plight.

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

We are not here to curse the darkness, but to light the candle that can guide us thru that darkness to a safe and sane future.

Our task is not to fix blame for the past, but to fix the course for the future.

Physical Fitness is the basis for all other forms of excellence.

Without debate, without criticism no administration and no country can succeed and no republic can survive.

No matter how big the lie; repeat it often enough and the masses will regard it as the truth.

We celebrate the past to awaken the future.

All of us do not have equal talent, but all of us should have an equal opportunity to develop our talent.

A boy spends his time finding a girl to sleep with. A real man spends his time looking for the one worth waking up to.

There is nothing more certain and unchanging than uncertainty and change.

Civility is not a sign of weakness.

Man will be what he was born to be: free and independent.

To those whom much is given, much is expected.

The rising tide lifts all the boats.

Do not pray for easy lives. Pray to be stronger men.

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.

Sometimes party loyalty asks too much.

An artist's working life is marked by intensive application and intense discipline.

We go into space because whatever mankind must undertake, free men must fully share.

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

If not us, who? If not now, when?

We must find time to stop and thank the people who make a difference in our lives.

The wave of the future is not the conquest of the world by a single dogmatic creed but the liberation of the diverse energies of free nations and free men.

America has tossed its cap over the wall of space.

And so, my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.

Washington is a city of Southern efficiency and Northern charm.

My father always told me that all businessmen were sons of bitches, but I never believed it till now.

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

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

Khrushchev reminds me of the tiger hunter who has picked a place on the wall to hang the tiger's skin long before he has caught the tiger. This tiger has other ideas.

If art is to nourish the roots of our culture, society must set the artist free to follow his vision wherever it takes him.

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.

I think 'Hail to the Chief' has a nice ring to it.

History is a relentless master. It has no present, only the past rushing into the future. To try to hold fast is to be swept aside.

We stand today on the edge of a new frontier -- the frontier of the 1960's -- a frontier of unknown opportunities and perils -- a frontier of unfulfilled hopes and threats.

The courage of life is often a less dramatic spectacle than the courage of a final moment; but it is no less a magnificent mixture of triumph and tragedy.

In a very real sense, it will not be one man going to the moon it will be an entire nation. For all of us must work to put him there.

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

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.

The human mind is our fundamental resource.

When written in Chinese, the word 'crisis' is composed of two characters. One represents danger and the other represents opportunity.

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

There is always inequality in life. Some men are killed in a war and some men are wounded and some men never leave the country. Life is unfair.

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

Communism has never come to power in a country that was not disrupted by war or corruption, or both.

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

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

Unconditional war can no longer lead to unconditional victory. It can no longer serve to settle disputes... can no longer be of concern to great powers alone.

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

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

The basic problems facing the world today are not susceptible to a military solution.

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

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.

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.

No one has been barred on account of his race from fighting or dying for America, there are no white or colored signs on the foxholes or graveyards of battle.

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

I'm an idealist without illusions.

The problems of the world cannot possibly be solved by skeptics or cynics whose horizons are limited by the obvious realities. We need men who can dream of things that never were.

The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie, deliberate, contrived and dishonest, but the myth, persistent, persuasive and unrealistic.

The pay is good and I can walk to work.

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.

Mothers all want their sons to grow up to be president, but they don't want them to become politicians in the process.

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

Things do not happen. Things are made to happen.

Forgive your enemies, but never forget their names.

The best road to progress is freedom's road.

Victory has a thousand fathers, but defeat is an orphan.

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!

I hope that no American will waste his franchise and throw away his vote by voting either for me or against me solely on account of my religious affiliation. It is not relevant.

Sure it's a big job; but I don't know anyone who can do it better than I can.

Modern cynics and skeptics... see no harm in paying those to whom they entrust the minds of their children a smaller wage than is paid to those to whom they entrust the care of their plumbing.

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

It is an unfortunate fact that we can secure peace only by preparing for war.