JFK Quotes

Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.

Efforts and courage are not enough without purpose and direction.

Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or present are certain to miss the future.

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

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

Every accomplishment starts with the decision to try.

Children are the world’s most valuable resource and its best hope for the future.

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

Mankind must put an end to war, or war will put an end to mankind.

The greatest enemy of truth is not the lie, but the indifference to it.

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

Those who dare to fail miserably can achieve greatly.

Leadership and learning are indispensable to each other.

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

The greater our knowledge increases, the greater our ignorance unfolds.

Forgive your enemies, but never forget their names.

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.

Our problems are man-made, therefore they may be solved by man.

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

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.

Let us never negotiate out of fear, but let us never fear to negotiate.

Liberty without learning is always in peril, and learning without liberty is always in vain.

A child miseducated is a child lost.

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.

Everywhere immigrants have enriched and strengthened the fabric of American life.

A nation reveals itself not only by the men it produces but also by the men it honors, the men it remembers.

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.

Efforts and courage are not enough without purpose and direction.

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

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

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.

Our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children’s future. And we are all mortal.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

Let us never negotiate out of fear, but let us never fear to negotiate.

The United States, as the world knows, will never start a war.

The very word ‘secrecy’ is repugnant in a free and open society.

The margin is narrow, but the responsibility is clear.

Art is the great democrat, calling forth creative genius from every sector of society, disregarding race or religion or wealth or color.

In a world of complex and continuing problems, in a world full of frustrations and irritations, America’s leadership must be guided by the lights of learning and reason or else those who confuse rhetoric with reality and the plausible with the possible will gain the popular ascendancy with their seemingly swift and simple solutions to every world problem.

To those peoples in the huts and villages of half the globe struggling to break the bonds of mass misery, we pledge our best efforts to help them help themselves, for whatever period is required.

The unity of freedom has never relied on uniformity of opinion.

Liberty without learning is always in peril and learning without liberty is always in vain.

The Chinese use two brush strokes to write the word ‘crisis.’ One brush stroke stands for danger; the other for opportunity.

The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who, in times of great moral crisis, maintain their neutrality.