Profiles in Courage QUOTES

2 " 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. "

― John F. Kennedy , Profiles in Courage

4 " To be courageous, these stories make clear, requires no exceptional qualifications, no magic formula, no special combination of time, place and circumstance. It is an opportunity that sooner or later is presented to us all. Politics merely furnishes one arena which imposes special tests of courage. In whatever arena of life one may meet the challenge of courage, whatever may be the sacrifices he faces if he follow his conscience - the loss of his friends, his fortune, his contentment, even the esteem of his fellow men - each man must decide for himself the course he will follow. The stories of past courage can define that ingredient - they can teach, they can offer hope, they provide inspiration. But they cannot supply courage itself. For this each man must look into his own soul. "

― John F. Kennedy , Profiles in Courage

6 " Of course, it would be much easier if we could all continue to think in traditional political patterns—of liberalism and conservatism, as Republicans and Democrats, from the viewpoint of North and South, management and labor, business and consumer or some equally narrow framework. It would be more comfortable to continue to move and vote in platoons, joining whomever of our colleagues are equally enslaved by some current fashion, raging prejudice or popular movement. But today this nation cannot tolerate the luxury of such lazy political habits. Only the strength and progress and peaceful change that come from independent judgment and individual ideas—and even from the unorthodox and the eccentric—can enable us to surpass that foreign ideology that fears free thought more than it fears hydrogen bombs. We shall need compromises in the days ahead, to be sure. But these will be, or should be, compromises of issues, not of principles. We can compromise our political positions, but not ourselves. "

― John F. Kennedy , Profiles in Courage

8 " It is when the politician loves neither the public good nor himself, or when his love for himself is limited and is satisfied by the trappings of office, that the public interest is badly served. "

― John F. Kennedy , Profiles in Courage

10 " All of us in the Congress are made fully aware of the importance of party unity (what sins have been committed in that name!) "

― John F. Kennedy , Profiles in Courage

12 " Woodrow Wilson, for example, shortly before his death, buffeted by the Senate in his efforts on behalf of the League of Nations and the Versailles Treaty, rejected the suggestion that he seek a seat in the Senate from New Jersey, stating: “Outside of the United States, the Senate does not amount to a damn. And inside the United States the Senate is mostly despised; they haven’t had a thought down there in fifty years.” There are many who agreed with Wilson in 1920, and some who might agree with those sentiments today. But "

― John F. Kennedy , Profiles in Courage

14 " And finally, at age seventy, having distinguished himself as a brilliant Secretary of State, an independent President and an eloquent member of Congress, he was to record somberly that his “whole life has been a succession of disappointments. I can scarcely recollect a single instance of success in anything that I ever undertook.” Yet "

― John F. Kennedy , Profiles in Courage

16 " Señor presidente, comenzó, quiero hablar hoy, no como un hombre de Massachusetts, ni como un hombre del Norte, sino como un estadounidense y un miembro del Senado de Estados Unidos... Hablo hoy por la preservación de la Unión. Escuchen mis razones. "

― John F. Kennedy , Profiles in Courage

18 " Today the challenge of political courage looms larger than ever before. For our everyday life is becoming so saturated with the tremendous power of mass communications that any unpopular or unorthodox course arouses a storm of protests such as John Quincy Adams—under attack in 1807—could never have envisioned. Our political life is becoming so expensive, so mechanized and so dominated by professional politicians and public relations men that the idealist who dreams of independent statesmanship is rudely awakened by the necessities of election and accomplishment. And our public life is becoming so increasingly centered upon that seemingly unending war to which we have given the curious epithet “cold” that we tend to encourage rigid ideological unity and orthodox patterns of thought. And thus, in the days ahead, only the very courageous will be able to take the hard and unpopular decisions necessary for our survival in the struggle with a powerful enemy—an enemy with leaders who need give little thought to the popularity of their course, who need pay little tribute to the public opinion they themselves manipulate, and who may force, without fear of retaliation "

― John F. Kennedy , Profiles in Courage

20 " ¿Dónde más, en un país que no sea totalitario, sino en la profesión política, se espera que el individuo lo sacrifique todo —incluyendo su propia carrera— por el bien nacional? "

― John F. Kennedy , Profiles in Courage