John F. Kennedy Quotes About Debate

• But I think the American people expect more from us than cries of indignation and attack. The times are too grave, the challenge too urgent, and the stakes too high to permit the customary passions of political debate. We are not here to curse the darkness, but to light the candle that can guide us through that darkness to a safe and sane future. As Winston Churchill said on taking office some twenty years ago: if we open a quarrel between the present and the past, we shall be in danger of losing the future.

  John F. Kennedy

  Passion, Past, Thinking

  Presidential Nomination Acceptance Speech, en.wikisource.org. July 15, 1960.

• Without debate, without criticism no administration and no country can succeed and no republic can survive.

  John F. Kennedy

  Country, Government, President

  Address to the American Newspaper Publishers, delivered 27 April 1961, Waldorf Astoria Hotel, New York

• There is danger that totalitarian governments, not subject to vigorous popular debate, will underestimate the will and unity of democratic societies where vital interests are concerned.

  John F. Kennedy

  Government, Unity, Underestimate

  Kennedy, John F. (1962). “Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: John F. Kennedy, 1961”, p.477, Best Books on

• I think the American people expect more from us than cries of indignation and attack. The times are too grave, the challenge too urgent, and the stakes too high - to permit the customary passions of political debate.

  John F. Kennedy

  Passion, Thinking, People

  Presidential Nomination Acceptance Speech, en.wikisource.org. July 15, 1960.

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