Remembering JFK

Fifty years ago today, President John F. Kennedy was gunned down in Dallas, Texas.  I was in high school when we all heard the news.  By the time I got on the subway to go home that afternoon, the world knew that the shot had been fatal.  Just forty-six years old, he had been President for less than three years.  In that short time, he inspired a generation of young Americans to believe that the world could be better. 

His inaugural speech in 1961, given at the height of the Cold War, is his best known.  "The torch has been passed to a new generation" and "Ask not what your country can do for you but what you can do for your country" are probably the most memorable and quoted lines. 

Here is a personal selection of some other JFK quotes from his speeches.

We stand today on the edge of a New Frontier...a frontier of unknown opportunities and perils — a frontier of unfulfilled hopes and threats...Beyond that frontier are the uncharted areas of science and space, unsolved problems of peace and war, unconquered pockets of ignorance and prejudice, unanswered questions of poverty and surplus...I believe the times demand new invention, innovation, imagination, decision. I am asking each of you to be pioneers on that New Frontier.

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

If an American, because the color of his skin is dark, cannot eat lunch in a restaurant open to the public, if he cannot send his children to the best public schools available, if he cannot vote for those public officials that represent him, if, in short, he cannot enjoy the full and free life which all of us want, then who among us would be content to have the color of his skin changed and stand in his place? Who among us would then be content with the counsels of patience and delay?

 

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

We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win...

We are not here to curse the darkness, but to light a candle that can guide us through that darkness to a safe and sane future. For the world is changing. The old era is ending. The old ways will not do.

We can help make the world safe for diversity. For in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children’s future. And we are all mortal.

Our problems are man-made, therefore they can be solved by man. No problem of human destiny is beyond human beings.

If more politicians knew poetry, and more poets knew politics, I am convinced the world would be a better place to in which to live.
 

 

 

If by a "Liberal" they mean someone who looks ahead and not behind, someone who welcomes new ideas without rigid reactions, someone who cares about the welfare of the people - their health, their housing, their schools, their jobs, their civil rights and their civil liberties - someone who believes we can break through the stalemate and suspicions that grip us in our policies abroad, if that is what they mean by a "Liberal", then I'm proud to say I'm a "Liberal.” 

 

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 many years, the path to peace may be open.... Let us, if we can, step 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.

 

 Mankind must put an end to war, or war will put an end to mankind. 

Images
James Meredith integrating the University of Mississippi in 1962 is from the Wikipedia entry on the United States Marshals Service

JFK and quote is from Prose Before Hos website
 
Kennedy signing the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty is from the National Archives and Records Administration found at the britannica.com entry