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

Bernstein quoted from a speech Kennedy would have delivered a few hours before the assassination: “America’s leadership must be guided by learning and reason.” The loss he said, was only deepened by the awareness that it had been the product of the exact antipodes of learning and reason — “ignorance and hatred.” … “Learning and Reason: those two words of John Kennedy’s were not uttered in time to save his own life; but every man can pick them up where they fell, and make them part of himself, the seed of that rational intelligence without which our world can no longer survive. This must be the mission of every man of goodwill: to insist, unflaggingly, at risk of becoming a repetitive bore, but to insist on the achievement of a world in which the mind will have triumphed over violence.

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.

With words we govern men.

President Abraham Lincoln said, “Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.

As President, Jack was a glory on the mountaintop. The New Frontier of which he dreamed touched deep and responsive chords in the American character. He could make lightning strike on the things he cared about. He was an irresistible force that made immovable objects move. He taught us to redeem the promise of health care for America's senior generation, to whom the nation owes so much of its present greatness. He taught us to control the atom, to end the threat of nuclear annihilation, so that we could leave our children a safer world. He taught us to make freedom ring in America --freedom for black and brown as well as white; freedom to live and work and vote; freedom to sit at a public lunch counter, to learn in a public classroom, to play football on a public field. He added a new dimension in foreign policy by tapping the idealism of our youth. He led us beyond our planet and launched us toward the moon. And in our own hemisphere, he summoned us to a new alliance of effort for the benefit of those less fortunate than ourselves. That is the way it was with Jack. There was a sense of progress and adventure, a rejection of complacency and conformity. There was a common mission, a shared ideal, and above all the joy of high purpose and great achievement. Jack believed that America's promises, that challenges are opportunities in disguise, that our spirit can soar again.

Think like a man of action, act like a man of thought

There are men who astonish and delight, men who instruct and guide. Some men's words I remember so well that I must often use them to express my thought. Yes, because I perceive that we have heard the same truth, but they have heard it better.

Once, men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free.

men’s actions are the best guides to their thoughts

The surest plan to make a Man
Is, think him so.

making men less shallow and morally better by making them think. O–219

It is better to enlighten men’s minds than to teach them to be obstinate in their prejudices.

Think like a man of action, act like a man of thought.