John F. Kennedy Quotes About Past

• Let us not seek the Republican answer or the Democratic answer, but the right answer. Let us not seek to fix the blame for the past. Let us accept our own responsibility for the future.

  John F. Kennedy

  4th Of July, Responsibility, Past

  John F. Kennedy's Speech at Loyola College Alumni Banquet, Baltimore, Maryland, www.jfklibrary.org. February 18, 1958.

• Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or present are certain to miss the future.

  John F. Kennedy

  Inspirational, Life, Change

  Kennedy, John F. (1964). “Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: John F. Kennedy, 1963”, p.517, Best Books on

• History is a relentless master. It has no present, only the past rushing into the future. To try to hold fast is to be swept aside.

  John F. Kennedy

  Patriotic, Past, Rushing

• A nation which has forgotten the quality of courage which in the past has been brought to public life is not as likely to insist upon or regard that quality in its chosen leaders today - and in fact we have forgotten.

  John F. Kennedy

  Leadership, Courage, Patriotic

• 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.

• The stories of past courage... can offer hope, they can provide inspiration. But they cannot supply courage itself. For this each man must look into his own soul.

  John F. Kennedy

  Motivational, Courage, Inspiration

  John F. Kennedy (1964). “Profiles In Courage”

• Immigration policy should be generous; it should be fair; it should be flexible. With such a policy we can turn to the world, and to our own past, with clean hands and a clear conscience.

  John F. Kennedy

  Past, Hands, Immigration

  President John F. Kennedy (2016). “A Nation Of Immigrants”, p.104, Pickle Partners Publishing

• Our task is not to fix blame for the past, but to fix the course for the future.

  John F. Kennedy

  Future, Healing, Past

• Hold fast to the best of the past and move fast to the best of the future.

  John F. Kennedy

  Moving, Past, Hold Fast

  Vanderbilt University 90th Anniversary Convocation Address, delivered 18 May 1963, Vanderbilt University Stadium, Nashville Tennessee

• Finally, I believe in an America where religious intolerance will someday end; where all men and all churches are treated as equal; where every man has the same right to attend or not attend the church of his choice; where there is no Catholic vote, no anti-Catholic vote, no bloc voting of any kind; and where Catholics, Protestants and Jews, at both the lay and pastoral level, will refrain from those attitudes of disdain and division which have so often marred their works in the past, and promote instead the American ideal of brotherhood.

  John F. Kennedy

  Religious, Attitude, Believe

  Address to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association, delivered 12 September 1960 at the Rice Hotel in Houston, TX

• As every past generation has had to disenthrall itself from an inheritance of truisms and stereotypes, so in our own time we must move on from the reassuring repetition of stale phrases to a new, difficult, but essential confrontation with reality. For the great enemy of truth is very often not the lie-deliberate, contrived and dishonest-but the myth-persistent, persuasive and unrealistic. Mythology distracts us everywhere.

  John F. Kennedy

  Lying, Moving, Past

  Yale University Commencement Address, delivered 11 June 1962

• To state the facts frankly is not to despair the future nor indict the past. The prudent heir takes careful inventory of his legacies and gives a faithful accounting to those whom he owes an obligation of trust.

  John F. Kennedy

  Trust, Past, Giving

  Kennedy, John F. (1962). “Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: John F. Kennedy, 1961”, p.19, Best Books on

• I look forward to an America which will not be afraid of grace and beauty, which will protect the beauty of our natural environment, which will preserve the great old American houses and squares and parks of our national past and which will build handsome and balanced cities for our future.

  John F. Kennedy

  Nature, Past, Squares

  Speech at Amherst College, Amherst, Massachusetts, on October 26, 1963. "Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: John F. Kennedy", p. 817, 1963.

• There are those who regard this history of past strife and exile as better forgotten. But, to use the phrase of Yeats, let us not casually reduce "that great past to a trouble of fools." For we need not feel the bitterness of the past to discover its meaning for the present and the future.

  John F. Kennedy

  Time, Past, Needs

  Address Before the Irish Parliament, delivered 28 June 1963, Dublin, Ireland

• Too often in the past, we have thought of the artist as an idler and dilettante and of the lover of arts as somehow sissy and effete. We have done both an injustice. The life of the artist is, in relation to his work, stern and lonely. He has labored hard, often amid deprivation, to perfect his skill. He has turned aside from quick success in order to strip his vision of everything secondary or cheapening. His working life is marked by intense application and intense discipline.

  John F. Kennedy

  Lonely, Art, Past

  John Fitzgerald Kennedy, Magnum Photos, inc, John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts (U.S.) (1962). “Creative America”

• In whatever area in life one may meet the challenges of courage, whatever may be the sacrifices he faces if he follows his conscience - the loss of his friends, his fortune, his contentment, even the esteem of his fellow men - each man must decide for himself the course he will follow. The stories of past courage can define that ingredient - they can teach, they can offer hope, they can provide inspiration. But they cannot supply courage itself. For this each man must look into his own soul.

  John F. Kennedy

  Courage, Inspiration, Loss

  Selected Quotations from John F. Kennedy's Book "Profiles in Courage", www.jfklibrary.org. 1957.

• We celebrate the past to awaken the future.

  John F. Kennedy

  Inspirational, Time, Past

  John F. Kennedy's Speech at the 25th Anniverary of the Signing of the Social Security Act, Hyde Park, New York, www.jfklibrary.org. August 14, 1960.

• But Goethe tells us in his greatest poem that Faust lost the liberty of his soul when he said to the passing moment: "Stay, thou art so fair." And our liberty, too, is endangered if we pause for the passing moment, if we rest on our achievements, if we resist the pace of progress. Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past are certain to miss the future.

  John F. Kennedy

  Time, Art, Past

  Kennedy, John F. (1964). “Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: John F. Kennedy, 1963”, p.517, Best Books on

• My call is not to those who believe they belong to the past. My call is to those who believe in the future.

  John F. Kennedy

  Inspirational, Believe, Past

  Speech at Civic Auditorium, Seattle, Washington, www.presidency.ucsb.edu. September 06, 1960.

• And lastly, Chairman Khrushchev has compared the United States to a worn-out runner living on its past performance, and stated that the Soviet Union would out-produce the United States by 1970. Without wishing to trade hyperbole with the Chairman, I do suggest that he reminds me of the tiger hunter who has picked a place on the wall to hang the tiger's skin long before he his caught the tiger. This tiger has other ideas.

  John F. Kennedy

  Wall, Past, Ideas

  News Conferences, www.jfklibrary.org. June 28, 1961.

• The great revolution in the history of man, past, present and future, is the revolution of those determined to be free.

  John F. Kennedy

  Independent, Past, Men

  John F. Kennedy (2013). “The Letters of John F. Kennedy”, p.139, Bloomsbury Publishing

• Most of us are conditioned for many years to have a political viewpoint - Republican or Democratic, liberal, conservative, or moderate. The fact of the matter is that most of the problems that we now face are technical problems, are administrative problems. They are very sophisticated judgments, which do not lend themselves to the great sort of passionate movements which have stirred this country so often in the past. - They deal with questions which are now beyond the comprehension of most men.

  John F. Kennedy

  Country, Past, Men

  Kennedy, John F. (1963). “Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: John F. Kennedy, 1962”, p.422, Best Books on

• The Republican nominee-to-be, of course, is also a young man. But his approach is as old as McKinley. His party is the party of the past. His speeches are generalities from Poor Richard's Almanac. Their platform, made up of left-over Democratic planks, has the courage of our old convictions. Their pledge is a pledge to the status quo-and today there can be no status quo.

  John F. Kennedy

  Party, Men, Past

• And so it is that I carry with me from this State to that high and lonely office to which I now succeed more than fond memories and fast friendships. The enduring qualities of Massachusetts - the common threads woven by the Pilgrim and the Puritan, the fisherman and the farmer, the Yankee and the immigrant - will not be and could not be forgotten in the Nations Executive Mansion. They are an indelible part of my life, my convictions, my view of the past, my hopes for the future.

  John F. Kennedy

  Life, Lonely, Memories

  Address to the Massachusetts legislature on January 09, 1961. "Congressional Record", Volume 107, Appendix, p. A169, January 10, 1961.

• This Government, as promised, has maintained the closest surveillance of the Soviet Military buildup on the island of Cuba. Within the past week, unmistakable evidence has established the fact that a series of offensive missile sites is now in preparation on that imprisoned island. The purpose of these bases can be none other than to provide a nuclear strike capability against the Western Hemisphere.

  John F. Kennedy

  Military, War, Past

  Cuban Missile Crisis Address to the Nation, delivered 22 October 1962

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