John F. Kennedy Quotes About Poverty

• This country cannot afford to be materially rich and spiritually poor.

  John F. Kennedy

  Country, Presidential, Poverty

  Kennedy, John F. (1964). “Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: John F. Kennedy, 1963”, p.13, Best Books on
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  If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich.

  John F. Kennedy

  Inspirational, Success, Helping Others

  Inaugural Address, 20 Jan. 1961

• The rights of every man are diminished when the rights of one man are threatened.

  John F. Kennedy

  Freedom, Men, Rights

  1963 On sending national guardsmen to ensure peaceful integration at the University of Alabama. Address to the nation, 11 Jun.

• 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.

  John F. Kennedy

  War, Struggle, Twilight

  Inaugural Address, 20 Jan. 1961. The words in quotation marks are from the Bible, Romans 12:12.

• Economic growth without social progress lets the great majority of the people remain in poverty, while a privileged few reap the benefits of rising abundance.

  John F. Kennedy

  Business, People, Growth

  Kennedy, John F. (1962). “Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: John F. Kennedy, 1961”, p.178, Best Books on

• For man holds in his mortal hands the power to abolish all forms of human poverty and all forms of human life. And yet the same revolutionary beliefs for which our forebears fought are still at issue around the globe -- the belief that the rights of man come not from the generosity of the state, but from the hand of God.

  John F. Kennedy

  Men, Issues, Rights

  Inaugural Address, delivered 20 January 1961

• The world is very different now. For man holds in his mortal hands the power to abolish all forms of human poverty, and all forms of human life.

  John F. Kennedy

  Science, Technology, Men

  Inaugural Address, delivered 20 January 1961

• The war against hunger is truly mankind's war of liberation.

  John F. Kennedy

  War, Justice, Poverty

• There is only one rule by which to judge if God is near us or is far away - the rule that God's word is giving us today: everyone concerned for the hungry, the naked, the poor, for those who have vanished in police custody, for the tortured, for prisoners, for all flesh that suffers, has God close at hand. We have the ability, we have the means, and we have the capacity to eliminate hunger from the face of the earth. We need only the will.

  John F. Kennedy

  Mean, Hands, Giving

• Never before has man had such a great capacity to control his own environment, to end hunger, poverty and disease, to banish illiteracy and human misery. We have the power to make the best generation of mankind in the history of the world.

  John F. Kennedy

  Men, Hunger Poverty, Volunteer

• Political sovereignty is but a mockery without the means of meeting poverty and illiteracy and disease. Self-determination is but a slogan if the future holds no hope.

  John F. Kennedy

  Determination, Mean, Self

  Address to the United Nations General Assembly, delivered 25 September 1961

• Malthus argued a century and a half ago that man, by using up all his available resources, would forever press on the limits of subsistence, thus condemning humanity to an indefinite future of misery and poverty. We can now begin to hope and, I believe, know that Malthus was expressing not a law of nature, but merely the limitation then of scientific and social wisdom. The truth or falsity of his prediction will depend now, with the tools we have, on our own actions, now and in the years to come.

  John F. Kennedy

  Believe, Future, Science

• Acting on our own, by ourselves, we cannot establish justice throughout the world, but joined with other free nations, we can ... assist the developing nations to throw off the yoke of poverty.

  John F. Kennedy

  Justice, Acting, Yoke

  Fourth of July Address at Independence Hall, delivered 4 July 1962, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

• One-third of the world, it has been said, may be free- -but one-third is the victim of cruel repression--and the other one- third is rocked by the pangs of poverty, hunger and envy. More energy is released by the awakening of these new nations than by the fission of the atom itself.

  John F. Kennedy

  Envy, Energy, Atoms

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