“Now the trumpet summons us again—not as a call to bear arms, though arms we need—not as a call to battle, though embattled we are—but a call to bear the burden of a long twilight struggle, year in and year out, ‘rejoicing in hope, patient in tribulation’—a struggle against the common enemies of man: tyranny, poverty, disease and war itself.”
John F. Kennedy
Inaugural Address of President John F. Kennedy (Primary source)
John F. Kennedy’s Inaugural Address marked a defining moment in American oratory, delivering a vision of renewal, responsibility, and global leadership during the Cold War. Addressing a divided world and a nation in transition, Kennedy struck a balance between idealism and resolve, famously declaring, ‘Ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country.’ This call to civic duty encapsulated his appeal for collective sacrifice and public service, urging Americans to embrace their role in shaping the nation’s future.
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“Ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country.”
— John F. Kennedy Primary source“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“The idea that Britain loses every battle except the last has proved correct so many times in the past that the average Englishman is unwilling to make great personal sacrifices until the danger is overwhelmingly apparent.”
— John F. Kennedy Primary source“To be sure, we are behind, and will be behind for some time in manned flight. But we do not intend to stay behind, and in this decade, we shall make up and move ahead.”
— John F. Kennedy Primary sourceMore quotes by John F. Kennedy →
“Truth is our element of life, yet if a man fasten his attention on a single aspect of truth, and apply himself to that alone for a long time, the truth becomes distorted and not itself, but falsehood.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson Primary source“The cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run.”
— Henry David Thoreau Primary source“Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.”
— Abraham Lincoln Primary source“And we in America should see that no man is ever given, no matter how gradually or how noble and excellent the man, the power to put this country into a war which is now being prepared and brought closer each day with all the premeditation of a long planned murder. For when you give power to an executive you do not know who will be filling that position when the time of crisis comes.”
— Ernest Hemingway Primary sourceResponsibility Hope Tyranny Poverty Disease War