Quotes By John F. Kennedy

The goal of education is the advancement of knowledge and the dissemination of truth.

When power leads man toward 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.

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.

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

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

War will exist until that distant day when the conscientious objector enjoys the same reputation and prestige that the warrior does today.

Tolerance implies no lack of commitment to one's own beliefs. Rather it condemns the oppression or persecution of others.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.