Quotes to inspire and reflect

Jack speaks to Alan (in a letter written and mailed here) about the “beat generation,” the “generation of furtives.”

I write the book, to be read, either now or by posterity. Which, I care not. It may well wait a century for a reader, as long as God waited six thousand years for a discoverer.

[ Responding to the question, “How did you become a war hero?” :] It was involuntary. They sank my boat.

The most true path of the planet [Mars] is an ellipse, which Dürer also calls an oval, or certainly so close to an ellipse that the difference is insensible.

[ On the appointment of his brother Robert F. Kennedy as attorney general :] I can’t see that it’s wrong to give him a little legal experience before he goes out to practice law.

[ Of the Bay of Pigs invasion :] All my life I’ve known better than to depend on the experts. How could I have been so stupid, to let them go ahead?

[ Remark to advisers after United States Steel raised prices on the heels of a labor settlement negotiated by Kennedy, 12 Apr. 1962 :] My father always told me that all business men were sons-of-bitches but I never believed it till now!

The definition of happiness of the Greeks . . . is full use of your powers along lines of excellence. I find, therefore, the Presidency provides some happiness.

Every American ought to have the right to be treated as he would wish to be treated, as one would wish his children to be treated. But this is not the case.

Yesterday a shaft of light cut into the darkness. . . . For the first time, an agreement has been reached on bringing the forces of nuclear destruction under international control.

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.

We are prepared to discuss a détente affecting NATO and the Warsaw pact.

Some men are killed in a war and some men are wounded, and some men never leave the country, and some men are stationed in the Antarctic and some are stationed in San Francisco. It’s very hard in military or in personal life to assure complete equality. Life is unfair.

Somebody once said that Washington was a city of Northern charm and Southern efficiency.

First, I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth. No single space project in this period will be more impressive to mankind, or more important for the long-range exploration of space; and none will be so difficult or expensive to accomplish.

I do not think it altogether inappropriate to introduce myself to this audience. I am the man who accompanied Jacqueline Kennedy to Paris, and I have enjoyed it.

The energy, the faith, the devotion which we bring to this endeavor will light our country and all who serve it—and the glow from that fire can truly light the world.

[ Referring to the Bay of Pigs disaster :] There’s an old saying that victory has 100 fathers and defeat is an orphan.

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.

In the long history of the world, only a few generations have been granted the role of defending freedom in its hour of maximum danger. I do not shrink from this responsibility—I welcome it.

If a beach-head of cooperation may push back the jungle of suspicion, let both sides join in creating a new endeavor, not a new balance of power, but a new world of law, where the strong are just and the weak secure and the peace preserved. All this will not be finished in the first one hundred days. Nor will it be finished in the first one thousand days, nor in the life of this Administration, nor even perhaps in our lifetime on this planet. But let us begin.

To our sister republics south of our border, we offer a special pledge—to convert our good words into good deeds—in a new alliance for progress—to assist free men and free governments in casting off the chains of poverty.

We do not campaign stressing what our country is going to do for us as a people. We stress what we can do for the country.

For those to whom much is given, much is required. And when at some future date the high court of history sits in judgment on each of us—recording whether in our brief span of service we fulfilled our responsibilities to the state—our success or failure, in whatever office we hold, will be measured by the answers to four questions: First, were we truly men of courage. . . . Secondly, were we truly men of judgment. . . . Third, were we truly men of integrity. . . . Finally, were we truly men of dedication.

This is not a time to keep the facts from the people—to keep them complacent. To sound the alarm is not to panic but to seek action from an aroused public. For, as the poet Dante once said: “The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who, in a time of great moral crisis, maintain their neutrality.”

We stand today on the edge of a new frontier—the frontier of the Nineteen Sixties—the frontier of unknown opportunities and perils—the frontier of unfulfilled hopes and unfilled threats. . . . The New Frontier of which I speak is not a set of promises—it is a set of challenges. It sums up not what I intend to offer to the American people, but what I intend to ask of them.

Among the many things he [Keats] has requested of me to-night, this is the principal one,—that on his grave-stone shall be this,—HERE LIES ONE WHOSE NAME WAS WRIT IN WATER.

The test of a democracy is not the magnificence of buildings or the speed of automobiles or the efficiency of air transportation, but rather the care given to the welfare of all the people.

Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards,

I always made an awkward bow.

When old age shall this generation waste,

I saw pale kings and princes too,

At once it struck me, what quality went to form a Man of Achievement especially in Literature & which Shakespeare possessed so enormously—I mean Negative Capability , that is, when man is capable of being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact & reason.

I think I shall be among the English Poets after my death.

“Life is trouble,” Zorba continued. “Death, no. To live—do you know what that means? To undo your belt and look for trouble!”

Oft of one wide expanse had I been told

How simple and frugal a thing is happiness: a glass of wine, a roast chestnut, a wretched little brazier, the sound of the sea. . . . All that is required to feel that here and now is happiness is a simple, frugal heart.

The train came out of the long tunnel into the snow country. The earth lay white under the night sky.

Finally, there is one imperative that, without being grounded on any other aim to be achieved through a certain course of conduct as its condition, commands this conduct immediately. This imperative is categorical . . . . This imperative may be called that of morality .

Act so that you use humanity, as much in your own person as in the person of every other, always at the same time as end and never merely as means.

This village belongs to the Castle, and whoever lives here or passes the night here does so in a manner of speaking in the Castle itself. Nobody may do that without the Count’s permission.

There is nothing it is possible to think of anywhere in the world, or indeed anything at all outside it, that can be held to be good without limitation, excepting only a good will .

You may object that it is not a trial at all; you are quite right, for it is only a trial if I recognize it as such.

“Like a dog!” he said: it was as if the shame of it must outlive him.

Only our concept of Time makes it possible for us to speak of the Day of Judgment by that name; in reality it is a summary court in perpetual session.

The Messiah will come only when he is no longer necessary, he will come only one day after his arrival, he will not come on the last day, but on the last day of all.

No one else could ever be admitted here, since this gate was made only for you. I am now going to shut it.

Maxima debetur puero reverentia .