“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
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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“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 →
“When you’re good to others, you are best to yourself.”
— Benjamin Franklin Primary source“There is no little enemy.”
— Benjamin Franklin Primary source“I wish I could write well enough to write that story, he thought. What we did. Not what the others did to us.”
— Ernest Hemingway Primary source“He that can have patience can have what he will.”
— Benjamin Franklin Primary source