Kennedy. Theodore C. Sorenson. Significant Sentences. Continued.

Significant sentences from Kennedy by Theodore Sorenson, a history of the words and philosophy of President Kennedy. Continued.

JFK: Together we shall save our planet or together we shall perish in its flames. p. 587.

Sorenson: "To those who said the money [for the space program] could be better spent relieving ignorance or poverty on this planet, he pointed out that this nation had the resources to do both...." p. 593.

Sorenson: "To those who argued that instruments alone could do the job [of going to the moon], he replied that man was 'the most extraordinary computer of them all... [whose] judgment, nerve and [ability to] learn from experience still make him unique' among the instruments." p. 593.

JFK: "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...." p. 594.

Sorenson: "Liberals denounced [the Peace Corps] as a gimmick.... Conservatives dismissed it as a nonsensical haven for beatniks and visionaries.... Communist nations denounced it as an espionage front.... and its own backers threatened to dissipate its momentum by talking, even before it started, of a UN Peace Corps and a domestic Peace Corps and a dozen other diversions." p. 598.

Sorenson: "[Latin America]. With a rate of infant mortality nearly four times our own, a life expectancy less than two-thirds our own, a per capita annual product less than one-ninth our own, an illiteracy rate of 50 percent, a lack of schools and sanitation and trained personnel, runaway inflation in some areas, shocking slums in the cities, squalor in the countryside, and a highly suspicious attitude toward American investments: where were we to begin?" p. 601.

JFK: "...those who make a peaceful revolution impossible will make a violent revolution inevitable."

JFK: "...a world made safe for diversity." p. 606.

Sorenson: "He [JFK] also recognized more clearly by 1963 that 'the big dangers of Latin America are...unrelated to Cuba... [including] illiteracy, bad housing, maldistribution of wealth, balance of payments difficulties, the drop in the price of their raw materials...[and] local Communist action unrelated to Cuba.' " p. 603.

Sorenson: "The Communist bloc was not a monolith in the sixties, if it ever had been, and he wanted to encourage every nationalist strain present." p. 607.

JFK: "I think it is a very dangerous untidy world...we will have to live with it." p. 608.