Quotes By John F. Kennedy

I am not the Catholic candidate for President. I am the Democratic Party's candidate for President, who happens also to be a Catholic.

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.

Man is still the most extraordinary computer of all.

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.

I don't think the intelligence reports are all that hot. Some days I get more out of the New York Times.

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

Forgive your enemies, but never forget their names.

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

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!

Let us not seek the Republican answer or the Democratic answer, but the right answer. Let us not seek to fix the blame for the past. Let us accept our own responsibility for the future.

I'm always rather nervous about how you talk about women who are active in politics, whether they want to be talked about as women or as politicians.

Domestic policy can only defeat us; foreign policy can kill us.

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.

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

There are risks and costs to action. But they are far less than the long range risks of comfortable inaction.

I'm an idealist without illusions.

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

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.

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

To state the facts frankly is not to despair the future nor indict the past. The prudent heir takes careful inventory of his legacies and gives a faithful accounting to those whom he owes an obligation of trust.

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.

We would like to live as we once lived, but history will not permit it.

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.

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

Let both sides seek to invoke the wonders of science instead of its terrors. Together let us explore the stars, conquer the deserts, eradicate disease, tap the ocean depths, and encourage the arts and commerce.

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

A nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people.

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

I look forward to a great future for America - 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.

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