John F. Kennedy
John F. Kennedy
John Fitzgerald "Jack" Kennedy, commonly referred to by his initials JFK, was an American politician who served as the 35th President of the United States from January 1961 until his assassination in November 1963. The Cuban Missile Crisis, The Bay of Pigs Invasion, the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, the establishment of the Peace Corps, developments in the Space Race, the building of the Berlin Wall, the Trade Expansion Act to lower tariffs, and the Civil Rights Movement all took place...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPresident
Date of Birth29 May 1917
CountryUnited States of America
There is always inequity in life. Some men are killed in a war, and some men are wounded, and some men are stationed in the Antarctic and some are stationed in San Francisco. It's very hard in military or personal life to assure complete equality. Life
The day before my inauguration President Eisenhower told me, ''You'll find that no easy problems ever come to the President of the United States. If they are easy to solve, somebody else has solved them.'' I found that hard to believe, but now I know it is true.
A life of complete leisure is the hardest work of all.
Don't pray for an easy life, pray to be a stronger man.
The great enemy of truth is very often not the lie--deliberate, contrived and dishonest--but the myth--persistent, persuasive and unrealistic. Too often we hold fast to the cliches of our forebears. We subject all facts to a prefabricated set of interpretations. We enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought.
In a time of turbulence and change, it is more true than ever that knowledge is power.
I look forward to 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.
We will be playing this New Year's Eve at the American Legion where I first played with my father and several others on New Year's Eve 50 years ago. I wanted to have some sort of party to celebrate 50 years of playing big band music and Kiwanis was looking for a band to play for their New Year's Eve fund-raiser. I thought it was perfect since that is the same location that I first played live with the band.
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.
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.
For 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.
We cannot expect that all nations will adopt like systems, for conformity is the jailer of freedom and the enemy of growth.
Why should man's first flight to the moon be a matter of national competition? Why should the United States and the Soviet Union, in preparing for such expeditions, become involved in immense duplications of research, construction and expenditure?
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.