My fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.
~ John F. Kennedy
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.
The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie, deliberate, contrived and dishonest, but the myth, persistent, persuasive and unrealistic.
We are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant facts, foreign ideas, alien philosophies, and competitive values. For 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.
Efforts and courage are not enough without purpose and direction.
A nation which has forgotten the quality of courage which in the past has been brought to public life is not as likely to insist upon or regard that quality in its chosen leaders today - and in fact we have forgotten.
Those who dare to fail miserably can achieve greatly.
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.
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.
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.
My brother Bob doesn't want to be in government - he promised Dad he'd go straight.
Politics is like football; if you see daylight, go through the hole.
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.
Things do not happen. Things are made to happen.
Our progress as a nation can be no swifter than our progress in education. The human mind is our fundamental resource.
When written in Chinese, the word 'crisis' is composed of two characters. One represents danger and the other represents opportunity.
Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.
Peace is a daily, a weekly, a monthly process, gradually changing opinions, slowly eroding old barriers, quietly building new structures.
Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or present are certain to miss the future.
Once you say you're going to settle for second, that's what happens to you in life.
Victory has a thousand fathers, but defeat is an orphan.
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!'
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.
Our growing softness, our increasing lack of physical fitness, is a menace to our security.
For time and the world do not stand still. Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or the present are certain to miss the future.
The very word 'secrecy' is repugnant in a free and open society; and we are as a people inherently and historically opposed to secret societies, to secret oaths, and to secret proceedings.
If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich.
Our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children's future. And we are all mortal.
The path we have chosen for the present is full of hazards, as all paths are. 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.
We cannot expect that all nations will adopt like systems, for conformity is the jailer of freedom and the enemy of growth.
