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John F. Kennedy Quotes about Past

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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.

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
4th Of July, Responsibility, Past
John F. Kennedy's Speech at Loyola College Alumni Banquet, Baltimore, Maryland, www.jfklibrary.org. February 18, 1958.

Our task is not to fix blame for the past, but to fix the course for the future.

John F. Kennedy
Future, Healing, Past

Hold fast to the best of the past and move fast to the best of the future.

John F. Kennedy
Moving, Past, Hold Fast
Vanderbilt University 90th Anniversary Convocation Address, delivered 18 May 1963, Vanderbilt University Stadium, Nashville Tennessee

We celebrate the past to awaken the future.

John F. Kennedy
Inspirational, Time, Past
John F. Kennedy's Speech at the 25th Anniverary of the Signing of the Social Security Act, Hyde Park, New York, www.jfklibrary.org. August 14, 1960.

My call is not to those who believe they belong to the past. My call is to those who believe in the future.

John F. Kennedy
Inspirational, Believe, Past
Speech at Civic Auditorium, Seattle, Washington, www.presidency.ucsb.edu. September 06, 1960.

Immigration policy should be generous; it should be fair; it should be flexible. With such a policy we can turn to the world, and to our own past, with clean hands and a clear conscience.

John F. Kennedy
Past, Hands, Immigration
President John F. Kennedy (2016). “A Nation Of Immigrants”, p.104, Pickle Partners Publishing

But I think the American people expect more from us than cries of indignation and attack. The times are too grave, the challenge too urgent, and the stakes too high to permit the customary passions of political debate. We are not here to curse the darkness, but to light the candle that can guide us through that darkness to a safe and sane future. As Winston Churchill said on taking office some twenty years ago: if we open a quarrel between the present and the past, we shall be in danger of losing the future.

John F. Kennedy
Passion, Past, Thinking
Presidential Nomination Acceptance Speech, en.wikisource.org. July 15, 1960.

And lastly, 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 has picked a place on the wall to hang the tiger's skin long before he his caught the tiger. This tiger has other ideas.

John F. Kennedy
Wall, Past, Ideas
News Conferences, www.jfklibrary.org. June 28, 1961.

But Goethe tells us in his greatest poem that Faust lost the liberty of his soul when he said to the passing moment: "Stay, thou art so fair." And our liberty, too, is endangered if we pause for the passing moment, if we rest on our achievements, if we resist the pace of progress. Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past are certain to miss the future.

John F. Kennedy
Time, Art, Past
Kennedy, John F. (1964). “Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: John F. Kennedy, 1963”, p.517, Best Books on

I look forward to an America which will not be afraid of grace and beauty, which will protect the beauty of our natural environment, which will preserve the great old American houses and squares and parks of our national past and which will build handsome and balanced cities for our future.

John F. Kennedy
Nature, Past, Squares
Speech at Amherst College, Amherst, Massachusetts, on October 26, 1963. "Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: John F. Kennedy", p. 817, 1963.

Too often in the past, we have thought of the artist as an idler and dilettante and of the lover of arts as somehow sissy and effete. We have done both an injustice. The life of the artist is, in relation to his work, stern and lonely. He has labored hard, often amid deprivation, to perfect his skill. He has turned aside from quick success in order to strip his vision of everything secondary or cheapening. His working life is marked by intense application and intense discipline.

John F. Kennedy
Lonely, Art, Past
John Fitzgerald Kennedy, Magnum Photos, inc, John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts (U.S.) (1962). “Creative America”

There are those who regard this history of past strife and exile as better forgotten. But, to use the phrase of Yeats, let us not casually reduce "that great past to a trouble of fools." For we need not feel the bitterness of the past to discover its meaning for the present and the future.

John F. Kennedy
Time, Past, Needs
Address Before the Irish Parliament, delivered 28 June 1963, Dublin, Ireland

The only significance of analyzing the past is that it does give us some key to the future.

John F. Kennedy
Past, Keys, Giving

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
Patriotic, Past, Rushing

As every past generation has had to disenthrall itself from an inheritance of truisms and stereotypes, so in our own time we must move on from the reassuring repetition of stale phrases to a new, difficult, but essential confrontation with reality. For the great enemy of truth is very often not the lie-deliberate, contrived and dishonest-but the myth-persistent, persuasive and unrealistic. Mythology distracts us everywhere.

John F. Kennedy
Lying, Moving, Past
Yale University Commencement Address, delivered 11 June 1962

The great revolution in the history of man, past, present and future, is the revolution of those determined to be free.

John F. Kennedy
Independent, Past, Men
John F. Kennedy (2013). “The Letters of John F. Kennedy”, p.139, Bloomsbury Publishing

Most of us are conditioned for many years to have a political viewpoint - Republican or Democratic, liberal, conservative, or moderate. The fact of the matter is that most of the problems that we now face are technical problems, are administrative problems. They are very sophisticated judgments, which do not lend themselves to the great sort of passionate movements which have stirred this country so often in the past. - They deal with questions which are now beyond the comprehension of most men.

John F. Kennedy
Country, Past, Men
Kennedy, John F. (1963). “Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: John F. Kennedy, 1962”, p.422, Best Books on

All over the world, particularly in the newer nations, young men are coming to power--men who are not bound by the traditions of the past--men who are not blinded by the old fears and hates and rivalries-- young men who can cast off the old slogans and delusions and suspicions.

John F. Kennedy
Hate, Past, Men
Democratic National Convention Nomination Acceptance Address, delivered 15 July 1960, Memorial Coliseum, Los Angeles

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
Trust, Past, Giving
Kennedy, John F. (1962). “Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: John F. Kennedy, 1961”, p.19, Best Books on

The Republican nominee-to-be, of course, is also a young man. But his approach is as old as McKinley. His party is the party of the past. His speeches are generalities from Poor Richard's Almanac. Their platform, made up of left-over Democratic planks, has the courage of our old convictions. Their pledge is a pledge to the status quo-and today there can be no status quo.

John F. Kennedy
Party, Men, Past

This Government, as promised, has maintained the closest surveillance of the Soviet Military buildup on the island of Cuba. Within the past week, unmistakable evidence has established the fact that a series of offensive missile sites is now in preparation on that imprisoned island. The purpose of these bases can be none other than to provide a nuclear strike capability against the Western Hemisphere.

John F. Kennedy
Military, War, Past
Cuban Missile Crisis Address to the Nation, delivered 22 October 1962