There are risks and costs to action.
by John F. Kennedy

There are risks and costs to action.
But they are far less than the long range
risks of comfortable inaction.
- John F. Kennedy

Related topics: Wisdom Life Human-Nature Psychology

When written in Chinese, the word "crisis"
is composed of two characters.
One represents danger and the other represents opportunity.
- John F. Kennedy

Conformity is the jailer of freedom and the enemy of growth.
- John F. Kennedy

The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie,
deliberate, contrived and dishonest,
but the myth, persistent, persuasive and unrealistic.
- John F. Kennedy

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Thank you for joining me on this journey we call life,
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Leadership and learning are indispensable to each other.
- John F. Kennedy

The best road to progress is freedom's road.
- John F. Kennedy

The greater our knowledge increases
the more our ignorance unfolds.
- John F. Kennedy

The time to repair the roof is when the sun is shining.
- John F. Kennedy

I'm an idealist without illusions.
- John F. Kennedy

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

Tolerance implies no lack of commitment to one's own beliefs.
Rather it condemns the oppression or persecution of others.
- John F. Kennedy

A man does what he must - in spite of personal consequences,
in spite of obstacles and dangers and pressures -
and that is the basis of all human morality.
- John F. Kennedy

Do not pray for easy lives.
Pray to be stronger men.
- John F. Kennedy

A man may die, nations may rise and fall, but an idea lives on.
- John F. Kennedy

We must use time as a tool, not as a crutch.
- John F. Kennedy

For time and the world do not stand still.
Change is the law of life.
And those who look only to the past or the present
are certain to miss the future.
- John F. Kennedy

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.
- John F. Kennedy

Once you say you're going to settle for second,
that's what happens to you in life.
- John F. Kennedy

Things do not happen. Things are made to happen.
- John F. Kennedy

A child miseducated is a child lost.
- John F. Kennedy

Efforts and courage are not enough without purpose and direction.
- John F. Kennedy

As we express our gratitude,
we must never forget that the highest appreciation
is not to utter words, but to live by them.
- John F. Kennedy

The human mind is our fundamental resource.
- John F. Kennedy

Our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this planet.
We all breathe the same air.
We all cherish our children's future.
And we are all mortal.
- John F. Kennedy

The goal of education is the advancement of knowledge
and the dissemination of truth.
- John F. Kennedy

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.
- John F. Kennedy

Our problems are man-made, therefore they may be solved by man.
And man can be as big as he wants.
No problem of human destiny is beyond human beings.
- John F. Kennedy

Peace is a daily, a weekly, a monthly process,
gradually changing opinions,
slowly eroding old barriers,
quietly building new structures.
- John F. Kennedy

And so, my fellow Americans,
ask not what your country can do for you;
ask what you can do for your country.
- John F. Kennedy

Too often we... enjoy the comfort of opinion
without the discomfort of thought.
- John F. Kennedy

We are tied to the ocean.
And when we go back to the sea,
whether it is to sail or to watch -
we are going back from whence we came.
- John F. Kennedy

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

The courage of life is often a less dramatic spectacle
than the courage of a final moment;
but it is no less a magnificent mixture of triumph and tragedy.
- John F. Kennedy

Let us seek to invoke the wonders of science ...
explore the stars, conquer the deserts,
eradicate disease, tap the ocean depths,
and encourage the arts and commerce.
- John F. Kennedy

We would like to live as we once lived,
but history will not permit it.
- John F. Kennedy

I'm always rather nervous about how you talk
about women who are active in politics,
whether they want to be talked about as women or as politicians.
- John F. Kennedy

The pay is good and I can walk to work.
- John F. Kennedy

I am sorry to say that there is too much point to the wisecrack
that life is extinct on other planets
because their scientists were more advanced than ours.
- John F. Kennedy

When we got into office, the thing
that surprised me most
was to find that things were just as bad
as we'd been saying they were.
- John F. Kennedy

The tax on capital gains directly affects investment decisions,
the mobility and flow of risk capital...
the ease or difficulty experienced by new ventures in obtaining capital,
and thereby the strength and potential for growth in the economy.
- John F. Kennedy

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

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 -
born in this century, tempered by war,
disciplined by a hard and bitter peace.
- John F. Kennedy

Geography has made us neighbors.
History has made us friends.
Economics has made us partners,
and necessity has made us allies.
Those whom God has so joined together,
let no man put asunder.
- John F. Kennedy

If anyone is crazy enough to want to kill
a president of the United States, he can do it.
All he must be prepared to do is give his life for the president's.
- John F. Kennedy

Now we have a problem in making our power credible,
and Vietnam is the place.
- John F. Kennedy

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

Let us never negotiate out of fear.
But let us never fear to negotiate.
- John F. Kennedy

I look forward to an America which
will not be afraid of grace and beauty.
- John F. Kennedy

Politics is like football; if you see daylight, go through the hole.
- John F. Kennedy

Physical fitness is not only one of
the most important keys to a healthy body,
it is the basis of dynamic and creative intellectual activity.
- John F. Kennedy

I look forward to a great future for America -
a future in which our country will match its military strength
with our moral restraint,
its wealth with our wisdom, its power with our purpose.
- John F. Kennedy

Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill,
that we shall pay any price, bear any burden,
meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe
to assure the survival and the success of liberty.
- John F. Kennedy

Domestic policy can only defeat us; foreign policy can kill us.
- John F. Kennedy

A nation that is afraid to let its people
judge the truth and falsehood in an open market
is a nation that is afraid of its people.
- John F. Kennedy

War will exist until that distant day
when the conscientious objector
enjoys the same reputation and prestige
that the warrior does today.
- John F. Kennedy

Washington is a city of
Southern efficiency and Northern charm.
- John F. Kennedy

We are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant facts,
foreign ideas, alien philosophies, and competitive values.
For a nation that is afraid to let its people judge
the truth and falsehood in an open market
is a nation that is afraid of its people.
- John F. Kennedy

A young man who does not have what
it takes to perform military service
is not likely to have what
it takes to make a living.
Today's military rejects include
tomorrow's hard-core unemployed.
- John F. Kennedy

Our growing softness,
our increasing lack of physical fitness,
is a menace to our security.
- John F. Kennedy

We prefer world law in the age of self-determination
to world war in the age of mass extermination.
- John F. Kennedy

The basic problems facing the world today
are not susceptible to a military solution.
- John F. Kennedy

In a very real sense, it will not be one man going to the moon,
it will be an entire nation.
For all of us must work to put him there.
- John F. Kennedy

No one has been barred on account of his race
from fighting or dying for America,
there are no white or colored signs
on the foxholes or graveyards of battle.
- John F. Kennedy

If a free society cannot help the many who are poor,
it cannot save the few who are rich.
- John F. Kennedy

The very word "secrecy' is repugnant in a free and open society;
and we are as a people inherently and historically
opposed to secret societies,
to secret oaths, and to secret proceedings.
- John F. Kennedy

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.
- John F. Kennedy

We cannot expect that all nations will adopt like systems,
for conformity is the jailer of freedom and the enemy of growth.
- John F. Kennedy

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

All free men, wherever they may live, are citizens of Berlin.
And therefore, as a free man, I take pride
in the words "Ich bin ein Berliner!"
- John F. Kennedy

We stand today on the edge of a new frontier ...
a frontier of unknown opportunities and perils -
a frontier of unfulfilled hopes and threats.
- John F. Kennedy

We believe that if men have the talent
to invent new machines that put men out of work,
they have the talent to put those men back to work.
- John F. Kennedy

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May the world be kind to you, and may your own thoughts be gentle upon yourself.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie