Quotes About President Kennedy

#1. Kennedy saw the presidency as the vital center of government, and a president's primary goal as galvanizing commitments to constructive change. He aimed to move the country and the world toward a more peaceful future, not just through legislation but through inspiration.

Robert Dallek

#2. President Kennedy stocked up on Cuban Cigars just before signing the embargo.

Hank Bracker

#3. Look at what President Kennedy managed to achieve during the Cuban missile crisis. If Bush had been president in 1962, do you think he would have avoided a nuclear war?

Bianca Jagger

#4. When things don't go well they like to blame presidents; and that's something that presidents are paid for.

John F. Kennedy

#5. When Caroline Kennedy endorsed Barack Obama in 2008 as her father's rightful heir, she laid upon him the mantle of Camelot and the enduring mystique of John F. Kennedy, who, according to polls, continues to be America's most beloved president.

Kitty Kelley

#6. The heroes of my childhood were Martin Luther King Jr. and John F. Kennedy ... but I was inspired by the ideals of our 40th president and became a Republican.

Mike Pence

#7. We need the kind of leadership exemplified by President Kennedy to just do it! But we must do it as good stewards, aggressively exerting control over the moon. We can best do this by going there.

Wilson Greatbatch

#8. Well, when Kathy Kennedy, who is the president of Lucasfilm, came to me to ask if I'd be interested in working on this "Star Wars" movie, we talked about a young woman at the center of the story from the outset. And it was something that was always an important part of this movie.

J.J. Abrams

#9. Embrace Change Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or present are certain to miss the future. JOHN F. KENNEDY Thirty-fifth president of the United States

Jack Canfield

#10. I think he Oswald felt he was a failure and for the United States and for President Kennedy and all of us. He knew he was a failure at everything he tried, frustrated, with a very sad life, but he was a Marxist.

John Sherman Cooper

#11. President Kennedy understood the importance of equal pay for equal work and signed historic legislation that gave women around the country hope that one day their wages would be on par with that of their male counterparts.

Rosa DeLauro

#12. Since President Kennedy signed the Equal Pay Act in 1963, the gap between men and women's earnings has narrowed by less than a half-cent per year. At this rate, American women will have to wait until 2062 to bring home the same salary as their male counterparts.

Jackie Speier

#13. I came at age in the '60s, and initially my hopes and dreams were invested in politics and the movements of the time - the anti-war movement, the civil rights movement. I worked on Bobby Kennedy's campaign for president as a teenager in California and the night he was killed.

David Talbot

#14. I am the Democratic Party's candidate for president who happens also to be a Catholic. I do not speak for my church on public matters - and the church does not speak for me.

John F. Kennedy

#15. I am just a humble worker. Commander Chavez decided I should be president. To President Obama, we remember that young leader and of the workers of Chicago. So we have a different kind of relation. For him and John Kerry. We talked to Edward Kennedy.

Nicolas Maduro

#16. President John F. Kennedy died at approximately 1:00 CST today, here in Dallas. He died of a gunshot wound to the brain. I have no other details regarding the assassination of the president.

Malcolm Kilduff

#17. It's now clear that from the very moment President Bush took office, Iraq was his highest priority as unfinished business from the first Bush Administration. His agenda was clear: find a rationale to get rid of Saddam.

Edward Kennedy

#18. I certainly think Obama is the most hopeful president I've seen in the country since John Kennedy.

John Irving

#19. Can anyone understand how it is to have lived in the White House and then, suddenly, to be living alone as the President's widow?

Jackie Kennedy

#20. I would say that without any doubt he's the killer - the law says beyond a reasonable doubt and to a moral certainty which I - there's no question that he was the killer of President Kennedy.

Henry Wade

#21. Jack Kennedy could have been a movie star himself. He had the charisma, the charm, that come-hither quality that can never be duplicated. Is it any wonder he got elected president?

Marilyn Monroe

#22. The most intimidating world leader was Lyndon Johnson, who became U.S. President when John Kennedy was assassinated. He exulted in this power and liked to inspire fear.

Paul Johnson

#23. Well, I think the reality is that as you study - when President Kennedy cut marginal tax rates, when Ronald Reagan cut marginal tax rates, when President Bush imposed those tax cuts, they actually generated economic growth. They expanded the economy. They expand tax revenues.

Mike Pence

#24. 'The Warmth of the Sun' was a very beautiful song that Brian and I wrote in the time period associated with President Kennedy's assassination. We didn't write words about that, but it was around that time we recorded that song, and there's a lot of emotion involved there.

Mike Love

#25. I just find Bobby Kennedy's short campaign for president so inspiring because his rhetoric identified what America can be like if we care about each other.

Tim Ryan

#26. The CIA could not face up to the American people and admit that its former employees had conspired to assassinate the President; so from the moment Kennedy's heart stopped beating, the Agency attempted to sweep the whole conspiracy under the rug.

Jim Garrison

#27. While the question of who killed President Kennedy is important, the question 'what killed him' is more important.

Martin Luther King Jr.

#28. The fact that President-elect Kennedy would be the first Catholic president did not sit well with many Americans. There was a fear that, as president, Kennedy's decisions would be based on his religion and dictated by the pope.

Clint Hill

#29. I hope for an America where no president, no public official, no individual will ever be deemed a greater or lesser American because of religious doubt - or religious belief.

Edward Kennedy

#30. Courage is the virtue that President Kennedy most admired. He sought out those people who had demonstrated in some way, whether it was on a battlefield or a baseball diamond, in a speech or fighting for a cause, that they had courage that they would stand up, that they could be counted on.

Robert Kennedy

#31. Eunice Kennedy Shriver, President Kennedy's sister, endorsed Arnold Schwarzenegger, said he's not a womanizer. Of course by Kennedy standards that means he never drove one off a bridge.

Bill Maher

#32. I remember the day when they sold Brian Deane and Jan Aage Fjortoft. It was like when President Kennedy got shot.

Neil Warnock

#33. [On President Kennedy's assassination Nov. 22, 1963:] Something dreadful is going to happen to the president today.

Jeane Dixon

#34. Every president has taken comfort and courage when told ... that the Lord "will be with thee. He will not fail thee nor forsake thee. Fear not-neither be thou dismayed."

John F. Kennedy

#35. On several occasions President Kennedy encouraged me to take a lover, an obvious sign he also had some himself.

Pierre Salinger

#36. Strength with which President Kennedy dispatched his enemies" - a tribute couched in rather remarkable words: Johnson described Kennedy "when he looks you straight in the eye and puts that knife into you without flinching.

Robert A. Caro

#37. As Justice Sandra Day O'Connor stated, even a state of war is not a blank check for a president to do whatever he wants.

Edward Kennedy

#38. I am going to build the kind of nation that President Roosevelt hoped for, President Truman worked for, and President Kennedy died for.

Lyndon B. Johnson

#39. Our Constitution wisely assigns both joint and separate roles to each branch of the government; and a President and a Congress who hold each other in mutual respect will neither permit nor attempt any trespass.

John F. Kennedy

#40. I would not look with favor upon a President working to subvert the First Amendment's guarantees of religious liberty ... Neither do I look with favor upon those who would work to subvert Article VI of the Constitution by requiring a religious test - even by indirection.

John F. Kennedy

#41. Frankly, I don't mind not being President. I just mind that someone else is.

Edward Kennedy

#42. When I mentioned about Adlai Stevenson, if he was vice president there would never have been an assassination of our beloved President Kennedy

Jack Ruby

#43. In August 1961, I visited President Kennedy at Hyannis Port. The Berlin Wall was going up, and he was about to begin a huge military buildup - reluctantly, or so he said, as he puffed on a cigar liberated by a friend from Castro's Cuba.

Gore Vidal

#44. I think the major role of the First Lady is to take care of the President so that he can best serve the people. And not to fail her family, her husband, and children.

Jackie Kennedy

#45. I believe in a president whose religious views are his own private affair, neither imposed by him upon the nation or imposed by the nation upon him as a condition to holding that office.

John F. Kennedy

#46. So much of the deep lingering sadness over President Kennedy's assassination is about the unfinished promise: unspoken speeches, unfulfilled hopes, the wondering about what might have been.

Marian Wright Edelman

#47. President and Mrs. Kennedy would walk into the East Room with their honored guests, preceded by the military color guard, who then posted their flags behind the receiving line. This ceremony never failed to move all of us, no matter how many times the staff witnessed it.

Letitia Baldrige

#48. When you tax capital gains income, you don't help the economy, you hurt the economy, which is why President Kennedy, President Reagan, President Clinton and President Bush all believed we should have a lower rate for capital gains.

Rob Portman

#49. Therefore, and Donahue was loath to admit it, the only explanation for the position of Kennedy's exit wound was that the shot had not come from the right rear but from the left rear, from a second gunman located somewhere over the President's left shoulder.

Bonar Menninger

#50. Our true remembrance to President Kennedy is in our actions to honor the unspoken words and finish the unfinished work today and tomorrow and for as long as it takes.

Marian Wright Edelman

#51. President Kennedy was a voracious reader and was forever coming up with fascinating bits of information.

Pierre Salinger

#52. The one appearance that I made for President Kennedy, he, as I understand, had his choice or was asked to make a list of the people he would like to have perform, and I was fortunate enough to be one of them.

Julie London

#53. In 1962, President Kennedy expanded an earlier trade embargo put in place by a predecessor, President Eisenhower, to a total economic blockade, which pushed the Cubans further in Moscow's direction.

Tariq Ali

#54. Many people remember that spirit that President Kennedy summoned forth. Many people look to me as somebody who embodies that sense of possibility.

Caroline Kennedy

#55. A Canadian newspaperman said yesterday that this is the President's "Easter egghead roll on the White House lawn." I want to deny that!

John F. Kennedy

#56. Who am I??
I doubt that Hitler Suicided, you here me right!
I doubt that JFK was killed without a reason it's not a coincidence. I don't believe in coincidences, there is a reason I'm sure.
I doubt about my father suicided!

Deyth Banger

#57. He may be president, but he still comes home and swipes my socks.

Joseph P. Kennedy

#58. I am not the Catholic candidate for President. I am the Democratic Party's candidate for President, who happens also to be a Catholic.

John F. Kennedy

#59. It's amazing to me that, in the 42 years since President Kennedy signed the Equal Pay Act into law, women today still receive fewer wages than men for the same work.

Mike Honda

#60. President Kennedy said that those who make peaceful revolution impossible make violent revolution inevitable. I would say that the converse is true.

Jacqueline Novogratz

#61. The government's instinct is to shroud itself in secrecy - to act like the office of a president instead of as a collective cabinet government held to account by the elected House of Commons.

Charles Kennedy

#62. On a visit to the space program, President Kennedy asked me about the satellite. I told him that it would be more important than sending a man into space. "Why?" he asked. "Because," I said, "this satellite will send ideas into space, and ideas last longer than men.

Newton N. Minow

#63. I got into the Kennedy White House because at the time I was president of the Women's National Press Club, and they assigned me to cover the early days of the Kennedy campaign. Jackie especially. Everyone was interested in the family.

Helen Thomas

#64. President Kennedy knew every agent by name. President Johnson knew many of us, but not as many as President Kennedy, probably.

Clint Hill

#65. I will tell you one thing. They will never drag me out like a little old widow like they did Mrs. Wilson when President Wilson died. I will never be used that way.

Jackie Kennedy

#66. I picked Harvard because it was in a big city, and a lot of girls' schools were nearby. And I liked President Kennedy, who went to Harvard.

Jack Canfield

#67. I liked Kennedy. So far, he is the only American president who could talk with me and with whom I could talk. I know Johnson, but I have not yet a clear opinion of him.

Sukarno

#68. I applaud the fact that the president has reached out to the members of Judiciary Committee. And I applaud. the fact that he has been meeting with members of the Judiciary Committee. He's been seeking out Republicans as well as Democrats.

Edward Kennedy

#69. Mr. Kennedy, you can't say Dallas doesn't love you!" These were the last words President John F. Kennedy would ever hear. Leslie

Allen Childs

#70. The White House used to belong to the American people. At least that's what I learned from history books and from covering every president starting with John F. Kennedy.

Helen Thomas

#71. Don't pray for easy lives. Pray to be stronger men.

JFK

#72. In 1962, President Kennedy succeeded in captivating Americans by explaining the advantages of being the first country to reach the moon and the dangers of allowing another nation to beat us there.

Mario Cuomo

#73. And so it is to the printing press
to the recorder of man's deeds, the keeper of his conscience, the courier of his news
that we look for strength and assistance, confident that with your help man will be what he was born to be: free and independent.

John F. Kennedy

#74. When President Kennedy took office, I was in the midst of my education.

Buzz Aldrin

#75. When sudden death takes a president, opportunities for new beginnings flourish among the ambitious and the tensions among such people can be dramatic, as they were when President Kennedy was killed.

Russell Baker

#76. I have told friends and supporters who are urging me to run that I would not oppose President Johnson under any foreseeable circumstances.

Robert Kennedy

#77. The White House was designed by Hoban, a noted Irish-American architect, and I have no doubt that he believed by incorporating several features of the Dublin style he would make it more homelike for any President of Irish descent. It was a long wait, but I appreciate his efforts.

John F. Kennedy

#78. President Kennedy's eloquence was designed to make men think; President Johnson's hammer blows are designed to make men act.

Robert A. Caro

#79. Mr. Kennedy had become disenchanted with the Vietnamese President, Ngo Dinh Diem, and Diem distrusted Kennedy.

Jim Bishop

#80. Bill Clinton told me that when he was 14, he shook John Kennedy's hand, and that inspired him to be president.

John Catsimatidis

#81. Sometimes I wonder if there is something about my family which invites violence. 'Is it envy,' you ask? I don't know ... I've had so much, a son as president, two as senators, a son-in-law who's an ambassador ... perhaps God doesn't permit that much.

Rose Kennedy

#82. The function and responsibility of the President is to set before the American people the unfinished business, the things we must do if we are going to succeed as a nation.

John F. Kennedy

#83. It seems likely MK-Ultra or a Manchurian Candidate, or possibly both, may have been involved in the 1968 assassination of Robert F. Kennedy, the US Presidential candidate most political analysts agree would have been elected President had he lived.

James Morcan

#84. If I get to be president, what can I do anyway? With Congress and the press, what chance do I have to make basic changes?

Robert Kennedy

#85. No one played devil's advocate, a figure that every group needs to avoid foolish or even disastrous decisions like this. It was reminiscent of President John Kennedy's "disastrous" decision to invade Cuba in the Bay of Pigs fiasco.11

Philip G. Zimbardo

#86. When President Kennedy challenged Americans to go to the moon, the question wasn't whether we'd get there, it was only when we'd get there.

Mitt Romney

#87. President Kennedy was the greatest man I ever met, and the best friend I ever had.

David Powers

#88. I've been a fascinated observer of grand public funerals since I was a kid, starting with the life-altering black-and-white images of President John F. Kennedy's funeral.

David Horsey

#89. Somebody had fired a shot at the President, and I had to get myself between the shooter and the President and Mrs. Kennedy. Nothing else mattered.

Clint Hill

#90. That tax relief can spur the economy and thereby benefit all Americans is something that Washington Democrats used to understand. President Kennedy, for example, aggressively cut taxes after being elected to stimulate the economy as a means of helping all Americans.

Mike Bouchard

#91. Had (President) Kennedy turned to his advisers and wailed, "What can we beat the Russians at?" and if someone had cried "Backgammon!" at that point, Apollo would never have happened.

Andrew Smith

#92. President Kennedy was willing to go to war. He was not a coward. The man had been in war and so had Ken O'Donnell. He was ready to protect this nation, but he was not ready for a military solution just because it was being rammed down his throat.

Kevin Costner

#93. We don't think well of our presidents when they are serving. Even Kennedy, with such a short presidency, was beginning to lose his remarkable appeal to the American people when he was suddenly sainted by death.

Charlton Heston

#94. The decision to go to the moon is now appreciated and associated with President Kennedy's speech, but somebody else had told him it was a good idea. It turned out to be a good commitment, but it was a unique situation.

Buzz Aldrin

#95. Whatever the political affiliation of our next President, whatever his views may be on all the issues and problems that rush in upon us, he must above all be the chief executive in every sense of the word.

John F. Kennedy

#96. There will be great presidents again but there will never be another Camelot.

Jackie Kennedy

#97. Americans have been given goals to achieve in Iraq, but not the standards by which to measure progress. And the only assurance Americans have been given that we can reach those goals is to trust the President and his Administration at their word.

Patrick J. Kennedy

#98. Whatever my party affiliation, I will continue to be guided by President Kennedy's statement that sometimes party asks too much.

Arlen Specter

#99. But to make a long story short, I decided that I was going to run, and I announced that I was going to run for president in Florida, I would be the favorite son from Florida, and that would stop Johnson and Kennedy from dividing up the state.

George Smathers

#100. President Kennedy didn't negotiate out of the Cuban missile crisis simply because he and Khrushchev got along well. Khrushchev didn't have the cards.

Colin Powell