Too often we... enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought.
Communism has never come to power in a country that was not disrupted by war or corruption, or both.
Why should man's first flight to the moon be a matter of national competition? Why should the United States and the Soviet Union, in preparing for such expeditions, become involved in immense duplications of research, construction and expenditure?
Man is still the most extraordinary computer of all.
Unconditional war can no longer lead to unconditional victory. It can no longer serve to settle disputes... can no longer be of concern to great powers alone.
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and the enemy of growth.
The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie, deliberate, contrived and dishonest, but the myth, persistent, persuasive and unrealistic.
The cost of freedom is always high, but Americans have always paid it. And one path we shall never choose, and that is the path of surrender, or submission.
We must use time as a tool, not as a couch.
Now we have a problem in making our power credible, and Vietnam is the place.
In a time of domestic crisis, men of goodwill and generosity should be able to unite regardless of party or politics.
If art is to nourish the roots of our culture, society must set the artist free to follow his vision wherever it takes him.
Modern cynics and skeptics... see no harm in paying those to whom they entrust the minds of their children a smaller wage than is paid to those to whom they entrust the care of their plumbing.
The problems of the world cannot possibly be solved by skeptics or cynics whose horizons are limited by the obvious realities. We need men who can dream of things that never were.
I just received the following wire from my generous Daddy; Dear Jack, Don't buy a single vote more than is necessary. I'll be damned if I'm going to pay for a landslide.
Those who dare to fail miserably can achieve greatly.
Politics is like football; if you see daylight, go through the hole.
Victory has a thousand fathers, but defeat is an orphan.
Domestic policy can only defeat us; foreign policy can kill us.
In the long history of the world, only a few generations have been granted the role of defending freedom in its hour of maximum danger. I do not shrink from this responsibility - I welcome it.