“The complacent, the self-indulgent, the soft societies are about to be swept away with the debris of history. Only the strong, only the industrious, only the determined, only the courageous, only the visionary who determine the real nature of our struggle can possibly survive.”
John F. Kennedy
Address Before the American Society of Newspaper Editors (Primary source)
This speech was delivered in the immediate aftermath of the failed CIA-backed invasion of Cuba by a force of Cuban exiles. Rather than acknowledging U.S. responsibility, Kennedy framed the operation publicly as a struggle by Cuban patriots against Fidel Castro’s communist regime, stressing that American armed forces had not intervened.
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“We choose to go to the Moon. 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.”
— John F. Kennedy Primary source“Ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country.”
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— Ralph Waldo Emerson Primary source