Time & Again - JFK - In His Own Words

“Let the word go forth from this time and place, to friend and foe alike, that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans.”

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JFK: In his own words

“Mr. Speaker, this Congress will adjourn Saturday. It will have considered action on many matters of varying importance, but will it not have taken any action to meet the most pressing problem with which this country is now confronted — the severe, ever-growing shortage of housing which faces our veterans and others of moderate income.

The Bureau of the Census, in a recent survey, stated that there were 160,000 veterans of World War II in the Boston area in July of 1946. Forty-two percent of the veterans who were married among this group were living in rented rooms or doubled up. Their need is drastic...

I am going to have to go back to my district Saturday, a district that sent probably more boys per family into this last war than any in the country, and when they ask me if I was able get them any homes, I will have to answer, ‘not a one — not a single one.’”

U.S. House of Representatives
Washington, D.C.
July 24, 1947

“Mr. President, the time has come for the American people to be told the blunt truth about Indochina. ... to pour money, material and men into the jungles of Indochina without at least a remote prospect of victory would be dangerously futile and self-destructive. Of course, all discussion of ’united action’ assumes the inevitability of such victory; but such assumptions are not unlike similar predictions of confidence which have lulled the American people for many years and which, if contained, would present an improper basis for determining the extent of American participation.

Despite this series of optimistic reports about eventual victory, every member of the Senate knows that such victory today appears to be desperately remote, to say the least, despite tremendous amounts of economic and material aid from the United States, and despite a deplorable loss of French Union manpower. ... I am, frankly, of the belief that no amount of American military assistance in Indochina can conquer an enemy which is everywhere and at the same time nowhere, ‘an enemy of the people’ which has the sympathy and covert support of the people.”

United States Senate
Washington, D.C.
April 6, 1954

“Mr. President, the most powerful single force in the world today is neither communism nor capitalism, neither the H-bomb nor the guided missile — it is man’s eternal desire to be free and independent. The great enemy of that tremendous force of freedom is called, for want of a more precise term, imperialism — and today that means Soviet imperialism and, whether we like it or not, and though they are not to be equated, Western imperialism.

Thus the single most important test of American foreign policy today is how we meet the challenge of imperialism, what we do to further man’s desire to be free. On this test more than any other, this nation shall be critically judged by the uncommitted millions in Asia and Africa, and anxiously watched by the still-hopeful lovers of freedom behind the Iron Curtain. If we fail to meet the challenge of either Soviet or Western imperialism, then no amount of foreign aid, no aggrandizement of armaments, no new pacts or doctrines or high-level conferences can prevent further setbacks or our course and to our security.”

United States Senate
Washington D.C.
July 2, 1957

“... I think the question before the American people is: Are we doing as much as we can do? Are we as strong as we should be? Are we as strong as we must be if we are going to maintain our independence and if we’re going to maintain and hold out the hand of friendship to those whose who look to us for assistance, to those who look to us for survival? I should make it very clear that I do not think we’re doing enough, that I am not satisfied as an American with the progress that we are making.

This is a great country, but I think it could be a greater country, and this is a powerful country but I think it could be a more powerful country.

I’m not satisfied to have 50 percent of our steel mill capacity unused. I’m not satisfied when the United States has last year the lowest rate of economic growth of any major industrialized society in the world. I’m not satisfied when we have over $9 billion worth of food, some of it rotting even though there is a hungry world and even though four million Americans wait every month for a food package from the government which averages 5 cents a day per individual. I’m not satisfied when the Soviet Union is turning out twice as many scientists and engineers as we are. I’m not satisfied when many of our teachers are inadequately paid or when our children go to school on part-time shifts. I think we should have an educational system second to none.”

Opening statement
First televised presidential debate
Sept. 26, 1960

“... I believe in an America that is officially neither Catholic, Protestant, nor Jewish — where no public official either requests or accepts instructions on public policy from the pope, the National Council of Churches or any other ecclesiastical source — where no religious body seeks to impose its will directly or indirectly upon the general populace or the public acts of officials — and where religious liberty is so indivisible that an act against one church is treated as an act against all.

For while this year it may be a Catholic against whom the finger of suspicion is pointed, in other years it has been, and may someday be again, a Jew, or a Quaker, or a Unitarian or a Baptist. It was Virginia’s harassment of Baptist preachers, for example, that helped lead to Jefferson’s Statute of Religious Freedom. Today, I may be the victim, but tomorrow it may be you, until the whole fabric of our harmonious society is ripped at a time of great national peril.”

Greater Houston Ministerial Association
Houston, Texas
Sept. 12, 1960

“... Today, every inhabitant of this planet must contemplate the day when this planet may no longer be habitable. Every man, woman and child lives under a nuclear sword of Damocles, hanging by the slenderest of threads, capable of being cut at any moment by accident or miscalculation or madness. The weapons of war must be abolished before they abolish us.”

United Nations General Assembly
New York, N.Y.
Sept. 25, 1961

“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 picked a place on the wall to hang the tiger’s skin long before he has caught the tiger. This tiger has other ideas....”

Presidential news conference
Washington, D.C.
June 28, 1961

“... I call upon Chairman Khrushchev to halt and eliminate this clandestine, reckless and provocative threat to world peace and to stable relations between our two nations. I call upon him further to abandon this course of world domination and to join in an historic effort to end the perilous arms race and to transform the history of man. He has an opportunity now to move the world back from the abyss of destruction by returning to his government’s own words that it had no need to station missiles outside its own territory, and without drawing these weapons from Cuba, by refraining from any action which will widen or deepen the present crisis, and then by participation in a search for peaceful and permanent solutions.

My fellow citizens: Let no one doubt that this is a difficult and dangerous effort on which we have set out. No one can foresee precisely what course it will take or what costs or casualties will be incurred. Many months of sacrifice and self-discipline lie ahead — months in which both our patience and our will be tested — months in which many threats and denunciation will keep us aware of our dangers. But the greatest danger of all would be to do nothing. ... Our goal is not the victory of might but the vindication of right — not peace at the expense of freedom but both peace and freedom, here in this hemisphere, and, we hope, around the world. God willing, that goal will be achieved.”

Televised address on Cuban missile crisis
Washington, D.C.
Oct. 22, 1962

“I think this is the most extraordinary collection of talent, of human knowledge, that has ever been gathered together at the White House — with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone.”

Greeting guests at a White House dinner honoring Nobel Prize winners
April 29, 1962

“Americans are free to disagree with the law but not to disobey it. For a government of laws and not of men, no man, however prominent and powerful, and no mob, however, unruly or boisterous, is entitled to defy a court of law. If this country should ever reach the point where any man or group of men, by force or threat of force, could long defy the commands of our courts and our Constitution, then no law would stand free from doubt, no judge would be sure of his writ and no citizen would be safe from his neighbors.”

Remarks to the nation on the
James Meredith case
Sept. 30, 1962

“... This nation was founded by men of many nations and backgrounds. It was founded on the principle that all men are created equal, and that the rights of every man are diminished when the rights of one man are threatened. ... We preach freedom around the world, and we mean it, and we cherish our freedom here at home. But are we to say to the world, and much more importantly, to each other, that this is a land of the free except for the Negroes, that we have no second-class citizens except Negroes; that we have no class or caste system, no ghettos, no master race, except with respect to Negroes?

Next week I shall ask the Congress of the United States to act, to make a commitment it has not fully made in this century, to the proposition that race has no place in American life or law. ... I am, therefore, asking the Congress to enact legislation giving all Americans the right to be served in facilities which are open to the public—hotels, restaurants, theatres, retail stores and similar establishments. This seems to me to be an elementary right. Its denial is an arbitrary indignity that no American in 1963 should have to endure. But many do.”

Televised address
Washington, D.C.
June 11, 1963

“Yesterday, a shaft of light cut into the darkness. Negotiations were concluded in Moscow on a treaty to ban all nuclear tests in the atmosphere, in outer space and under water. ... Now, for the first time in may years, the path of peace may be open. No one can be certain what the future will bring. No one can say whether the time can come for an easing of the struggle. But history and our own conscience will judge us harsher if we do not now make every effort to test our hopes by action, and this is the place to begin. According to the ancient Chinese proverb, ‘A journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step.’ My fellow Americans, let us take that first step. Let us, if we can, get back from the shadows of war and seek out the way of peace. And if that journey is 1,000 miles, or even more, let history record that we, in this land, at this time, took the first step.”

Address to the nation on the Test Ban Treaty
July 26, 1963

“We in this country, in this generation, are, by destiny rather than choice, the watchmen on the walls of world freedom. We ask, therefore, that we may be worthy of our power and responsibility, that we may exercise our strength with wisdom and restraint, and that we may achieve in our time and for all time the ancient vision of ‘peace on earth, goodwill toward men.’ That must always be our goal, and the righteousness of our cause must always underlie our strength. For as was written long ago, ‘except the Lord keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain.’”

Undelivered luncheon speech
Dallas, Texas
Nov. 22, 1963

Text of selected JFK speeches in their entirety

Text of televised presidential Kennedy-Nixon Debates