“If the self-discipline of the free cannot match the iron discipline of the mailed fist—in economic, political, scientific and all the other kinds of struggles as well as the military—then the peril to freedom will continue to rise.”
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.”
— 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.”
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“Well done is better than well said.”
— Benjamin Franklin Primary source“Sleep without supping, and you'll rise without owing for it.”
— Benjamin Franklin Primary source“Wish not so much to live long as to live well.”
— Benjamin Franklin Primary source“The reward of a thing well done, is to have done it.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson Primary source