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.
—John F. Kennedy
Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or present are certain to miss the future.
—John F. Kennedy
Topics: Past, Life, Change, The Past, Miscellaneous, Future
Don’t teach my boy poetry, an English mother recently wrote the Provost of Harrow. Don’t teach my boy poetry; he is going to stand for Parliament. Well, perhaps she was rightbut if more politicians knew poetry, and more poets knew politics, I am convinced the world would be a little better place to live on this Commencement Day of 1956.
—John F. Kennedy
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.
—John F. Kennedy
Topics: Exercise
It is an unfortunate fact that we can secure peace only by preparing for war.
—John F. Kennedy
Topics: Peace, War
For if Freedom and Communism were to compete for mans allegiance in a world at peace, I would look to the future with ever increasing confidence.
—John F. Kennedy
The greater our knowledge increases, the greater our ignorance unfolds.
—John F. Kennedy
Topics: Virtues, Knowledge
Let us resolve to be masters, not the victims, of our history, controlling our own destiny without giving way to blind suspicions and emotions.
—John F. Kennedy
Topics: Change
If we cannot end now our differences, at least we can make the world safe for diversity.
—John F. Kennedy
Topics: Conflict
Politics is a jungle-torn between doing the right thing and staying in office.
—John F. Kennedy
Topics: Politics
The cost of freedom is always high, but Americans have always paid it. And one path we shall never choose, and that is the path of surrender, or submission.
—John F. Kennedy
Topics: Americans, Society, Freedom
We would like to live as we once lived, but history will not permit it.
—John F. Kennedy
Topics: History, Living, Life
The purpose of foreign policy is not to provide an outlet for our own sentiments of hope or indignation; it is to shape real events in a real world.
—John F. Kennedy
Now we have a problem in making our power credible, and Vietnam is the place.
—John F. Kennedy
We want to be first; not first if, not first but; but first!
—John F. Kennedy
Topics: Competition
Without belittling the courage with which men have died, we should not forget those acts of courage with which men … have lived. 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. A man does what he must—in spite of personal consequences, in spite of obstacles and dangers and pressures—and that is the basis of all human morality…. In whatever arena of life one may meet the challenge of courage, whatever may be the sacrifices he faces if he follows his conscience—the loss of his friends, his fortune, his contentment, even the esteem of his fellow men—each man must decide for himself the course he will follow. The stories of past courage can define that ingredient—they can teach, they can offer hope, they can provide inspiration. But they cannot supply courage itself. For this each man must look into his own soul.
—John F. Kennedy
Topics: Obstacles, Courage, Difficulty, Bravery
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.
—John F. Kennedy
Topics: Peace
Our task is not to fix the blame for the past, but to fix the course for the future.
—John F. Kennedy
A police state finds that it cannot command the grain to grow.
—John F. Kennedy
Topics: Tyranny
I do not think it altogether inappropriate to introduce myself to this audience. I am the man who accompanied Jacqueline Kennedy to Paris, and I have enjoyed it.
—John F. Kennedy
Now the trumpet summons us again—not as a call to bear arms, though arms we need; not as a call to battle, though embattled we are—but a call to bear the burden of a long twilight struggle, year in and year out, “rejoicing in hope, patient in tribulation”—a struggle against the common enemies of man: tyranny, poverty, disease, and war itself.
—John F. Kennedy
We cannot be satisfied with things as they are. We cannot be satisfied to drift, to rest on our oars, to glide over a sea whose depths are shaken by subterranean upheavals.
—John F. Kennedy
Topics: Satisfaction
It is in the American tradition to stand up for one’s rights – even if the new way to stand up for one’s rights is to sit down
—John F. Kennedy
Topics: Americans
Tolerance implies no lack of commitment to one’s own beliefs. Rather it condemns the oppression or persecution of others.
—John F. Kennedy
Topics: Tolerance, Oppression, Commitment
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.
—John F. Kennedy
Topics: Wishes, Liberty
The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie—deliberate, contrived, and dishonest—but the myth—persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic.
—John F. Kennedy
Topics: Reason, Truth, Thought
There is, in addition to a courage with which men die, a courage by which men must live.
—John F. Kennedy
Topics: Courage
All this will not be finished in the first one hundred days. Nor will it be finished in the first thousand days, nor in the life of this administration, nor even perhaps in our lifetime on this planet. But let us begin.
—John F. Kennedy
Topics: Beginnings, Beginning
Across the gulfs and barriers that now divide us, we must remember that there are no permanent enemies. Hostility today is a fact, but it is not a ruling law. The supreme reality of our time is our indivisibility as children of God and our common vulnerability on this planet.
—John F. Kennedy
Topics: Reality, Wilderness
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.
—John F. Kennedy
Topics: Character, Challenges
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
- Robert F. Kennedy American Politician
- Lyndon B. Johnson American Head of State
- Richard Nixon American Head of State
- Herbert Hoover American Statesman
- Jimmy Carter American Head of State
- Ronald Reagan American Head of State
- Hubert Humphrey American Head of State
- John Quincy Adams American Head of State
- George H. W. Bush American Head of State
- Dwight D. Eisenhower American Head of State
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