- Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.
- [5/25/61, in a special address to Congress] I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the Earth.
- [1/20/61 inaugural address, on joint US/Soviet scientific ventures] Let both sides seek to invoke the wonders of science instead of its terrors.
- [1/30/61, State of the Union address] 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.
- 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.
- Forgive your enemies, but never forget their names.
- [6/26/63, speech in West Berlin, Germany] Two thousand years ago, the proudest boast was "Civis Romanus sum". Today, in the world of freedom, the proudest boast is "Ich bin ein Berliner". All free men, wherever they may live, are citizens of Berlin, and, therefore, as a free man, I take pride in the words "Ich bin ein Berliner!".
- I am certain that after the dust of centuries has passed over our cities, we, too, will be remembered not for victories or defeats in battle or in politics but for our contributions to the human spirit.
- Victory has a thousand fathers but defeat is an orphan.
- Conformity is the jailer of freedom and the enemy of growth.
- [privately, about Richard Nixon] Richard Nixon's a conservative . . . and if he became President, we could expect Republican policy would switch to the right. He is a filthy, lying son-of-a-bitch, and a very dangerous man.
- All my life, I've known better than to depend on the experts.
- [9/12/62, speech at Rice University, Houston, TX] 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 measure and organize 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.
- [on Marlon Brando] The greatest womanizer who ever set foot in Hollywood.
- Let us never negotiate out of fear, but let us never fear to negotiate.
- [Harry S. Truman] regards an open convention as one which studies all the candidates, reviews their records and then takes his advice.
- [6/10/63, in a commencement address] The United States, as the world knows, will never start a war. We do not want a war. We do not now expect a war. This generation of Americans has already had enough--more than enough--of war and hate and oppression.
- We shall do our part to build a world of peace where the weak are safe and the strong are just. We are not helpless before the task or hopeless of its success. Confident and unafraid, we must labor on--not towards a strategy of annihilation but towards a strategy of peace.
- In the final analysis, 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 futures. And we are all mortal.
- Our problems are manmade. Therefore, they can be solved by man. And man can be as big as he wants. No problem of human destiny is beyond human beings.
- The civil rights movement should thank God for [Eugene 'Bull' Connor]. He's helped it as much as Abraham Lincoln.
- [after the Bay of Pigs invasion] The advice of those who were brought in on the executive branch was unanimous, and the advice was wrong. And I was responsible.
- [1962] If anybody is around to write after this, they are going to understand that we made every effort to find peace and every effort to give our adversary room to move. I am not going to push the Russians an inch beyond what is necessary.
- [in the fall of 1960] I suppose if I win, my poon days are over.
- [1960, joking with a supporter] Do you realize the responsibility I carry? I'm the only person between [Richard Nixon] and the White House.
- [1961] We are probably strong enough to prevent one nation from unleashing nuclear weapons on another. But we can't prevent infiltration, assassination, sabotage, bribery, any of the weapons of guerrilla warfare. One guerrilla can pin down 12 conventional soldiers, and we've got nothing equivalent.
- [in 1960, to Ben Bradlee, on how he intended to announce the appointment of brother Robert F. Kennedy to the position of US Attorney General] Well, I think I'll open the door of the Georgetown house some morning about 2:00 A.M., look up and down the street, and if there's no one there, I'll whisper, "It's Bobby".
- [November 1961] This chimpanzee who is flying in space took off at 10:08. He reports that everything is perfect and working well.
- [1962, to Theodore Sorensen] If we solve the Berlin problem without war, Cuba will look pretty small. And if there is a war, Cuba won't matter much, either.
- Some people have their liberalism "made" by the time they reach their late 20s. I didn't. I was caught in crosscurrents and eddies. It was only later that I got into the stream of things.
- I must say, in defense of our own country, if the United States had not emphasized the military since 1945, the shape of the globe would be very different than it is today. So that those who feel that we overemphasize it might consider the fate of freedom if we had not emphasized it.
- [June 11, 1963] It is not enough to pin the blame on others, to say this is the problem of one section of one country or another, or deplore the fact that we face. A great change is at hand, and our task, our obligation, is to make that revolution, than change, peaceful and constructive for all. Those who do nothing are inviting shame, as well as violence. Those who act boldly are recognizing right, as well as reality.
- [June 11, 1963] If an American, because his skin is dark, cannot eat lunch in a restaurant open to the public, if he cannot send his children to the best public school available, if he cannot vote for the public officials who will represent him, if, in short, he cannot enjoy the full and free life which all of us want, then who among us would be content to have the color of his skin changed and stand in his place? Who among us would then be content with the counsels of patience and delay?
- [1962] Too often in the past we have thought of the artist as an idler and dilettante and of the lover of arts as somehow sissy or effete. We have done both an injustice. The life of the artist is, in relation to his work, stern and lonely. He has labored hard, often among deprivation, to perfect his skill. He has turned aside from quick success in order to strip his vision of everything secondary or cheapening. His working life is marked by intense application and intense discipline. As for the lover of arts, it is he who, by subjecting himself to the sometimes disturbing experience of art, sustains the artist - and seeks only the reward that his life will, in consequence, be the more fully lived.
- It is only after you wield the powers of the presidency that you get hated. [Wayne Morse], [Jimmy Hoffa], Al Hayes, etc., all hate me now merely because of one bill. Presidents are bound to be hated unless they are as bland as [Dwight D. Eisenhower].
- [November 22, 1963, upon arriving in Dallas, Texas] We're really in nut country now.
- [March 1962] I sometimes think we are too much impressed by the clamor of daily events. Newspaper headlines and the television screens give us a short view . . . Yet it is the profound tendencies of history, and not the passing excitements, that will shape our future.
- [1960] Once you say you're going to settle for second that's what happens to you in life, I find.
- [on Inauguration Day, January 21, 1961] The energy, the faith, the devotion which we bring to this endeavour will light our country and all who serve it - and the glow from that fire can truly light the world.
- [on Inauguration Day, January 20, 1961] Together, let us explore the stars, conquer the deserts, tap the ocean depths and encourage the arts and commerce.
- [to 49 Nobel Prize winners who came for dinner] This is the most extraordinary collection of talent that has ever gathered at the White House--with the possibility of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone.
- We are tied to the ocean. And when we go back to the sea, whether it is to sail or watch - we are going back from whence we came.
- We don't have a prayer of staying in Vietnam. Those people hate us. They are going to throw our asses out of there at any point. But I can't give up that territory to the Communists and get the American people to re-elect me.
- There is no complete evidence that Hitler died. The Russians doubt that he is dead.
- [on the United Nations] In practice, I doubt that it will prove effective in the sense of its elaborate mechanics being frequently employed or vitally decisive in deterring war or peace.
- We are going to put a man on the surface of the Moon.
- The room where Hitler is supposed to have met his death showed scorched walls and traces of fire. There is no complete evidence, however, that the body that was found was Hitler's body.
- Capitalism is on the way out - although many Englishmen feel this is not applicable to England. Socialism is inefficient; I will never believe differently, but you can feed people in a socialistic state, and that may be what will insure its eventual success.
- After visiting these two places you can easily see how that within a few years Hitler will emerge from the hatred that surrounds him now as one of the most significant figures who ever lived. He had boundless ambition for his country, which rendered him a menace to the peace of the world, but he had a mystery about him in the way that he lived and in the manner of his death that will live and grow after him. He had in him the stuff of which legends are made.
- [from his inaugural address, 1961] Let us go forth to lead the land we love, ask His blessing and His help, but knowing that here on earth God's work must truly be our own.
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