Address at Rice University on the Nation’s Space Effort (Primary source)
A defining statement of America’s ambition during the Space Race. Delivered at Rice Stadium in Houston, Texas, the speech rallied public support for the Apollo program and the goal of landing a man on the Moon before the end of the 1960s—a direct response to Soviet advances in space exploration.
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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, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.”
John F. Kennedy
“Ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country.”
— John F. Kennedy Primary source“We have had our failures, but so have others, even if they do not admit them. And they may be less public.”
— John F. Kennedy Primary source“Let us never negotiate out of fear. But let us never fear to negotiate.”
— 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 sourceMore quotes by John F. Kennedy →
“All things are easy to industry, all things difficult to sloth.”
— Benjamin Franklin Primary source“’Tis easy to see, hard to foresee.”
— Benjamin Franklin Primary source“Without ambition one starts nothing. Without work one finishes nothing. The prize will not be sent to you. You have to win it.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson Disputed“Thou wilt go now, rabbit. But I go with thee. As long as there is one of us there is both of us.”
— Ernest Hemingway Primary source