John F. Kennedy America Quotations

America has tossed its cap over the wall of space.

The United States has to move very fast to even stand still.

In America there must be only citizens, not divided by grade, first and second, but citizens, east, west, north, and south.

I look forward to an America which will not be afraid of grace and beauty.

If we fail to encourage physical development and prowess, we will undermine our capcity for thought, for work, and for use of those skills vital to an expanding and complex America.

This knowledge, the knowledge that the physical well-being of the citizen is an important foundation for all of the activities of the nation, is as old as Western civilization itself. But it is a knowledge which today, in America, we are in danger of forgetting.

...the physical fitness of our citizens is a vital prerequisite to America's realization of its full potential as a nation, and to the opportunity of each individual citizen to make full and fruitful use of his capacities.

The labor movement is people. Our unions have brought millions of men and women together, made them members one of another, and given them common tools for common goals. Their goals are goals for all America - and their enemies are the enemies for progress. The two cannot be separated.

The Kennedy Administration's public pronouncements on the matter suggested that the presence of Soviet nuclear missiles in Castro's Cuba would represent an unacceptable strategic threat to the United States. . . . This urgent transformation of Cuba into an important strategic base - by the presence of these large, long-range, and clearly offensive weapons of sudden mass-destruction - constitutes an explicit threat to the peace and security of all the Americas. . . .

I believe in an America ... where no public official either requests or accepts instructions on public policy from the Pope, the National Council of Churches, or any other ecclesiastical source.

But because I am a Catholic, and no Catholic has ever been elected president, the real issues in this campaign have been obscured - perhaps deliberately, in some quarters less responsible than this. So it is apparently necessary for me to state once again not what kind of church I believe in - for that should be important only to me - but what kind of America I believe in.

Blight has descended on our regulatory agencies--and a dry rot, beginning in Washington, is seeping into every corner of America--in the payola mentality, the expense account way of life, the confusion between what is legal and what is right.

We must live our lives in such a way that our children, and their children after them, will form a natural and lasting commitment to the vigorous life. Only in this way can we be assured that the spirit and strength of America will be constantly replenished..

To exclude from positions of trust and command all those below the age of 44 would have kept Jefferson from writing the Declaration of Independence, Washington from commanding the Continental Army, Madison from fathering the Constitution, Hamilton from serving as secretary of the treasury, Clay from being elected speaker of the House and Christopher Columbus from discovering America.

I look forward to an america in which commands respect throughout the world, not only for its strength, but for its civilization as well. And I look forward to a world in which we will be safe not only for democracy and diversity but also for personal distinction.

I look forward to an America which will not be afraid of grace and beauty...an America which will reward achievement in the arts as we reward achievement in business or statecraft.

I believe in an America that is officially neither Catholic, Protestant, or Jewish ... where religious liberty is so indivisible that an act against one church is treated as an act against all.

The United States of America has no intention of finishing second in space. This effort is expensive-but it pays its way for freedom and for America.

The American Labor Movement has consistently demonstrated its devotion to the public interest. It is, and has been, good for all America.