The basis of effective government is public confidence, and that confidence is endangered when ethical standards falter or appear to falter.
John F. KennedyThe high office of the President has been used to foment a plot to destroy the American's freedom and before I leave office, I must inform the citizens of this plight.
John F. KennedyHistory 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. KennedyFor 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. KennedyI 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.
John F. KennedyA full scale nuclear exchange, lasting less than 60 minutes...could wipe out more than 300 million Americans, Europeans, and Russians, as well as untold numbers elsewhere. And the survivors-as Chairman Khrushchev warned the Communist Chinese, `the survivors would envy the dead.' For they would inherit a world so devastated by explosions and poison and fire that today we cannot conceive of its horrors.
John F. Kennedy