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Profiles in Courage Profiles in Courage by John F. Kennedy
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Profiles in Courage Quotes Showing 1-30 of 34
“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
“A man does what he must — in spite of personal consequences, in spite of obstacles and dangers, and pressures — and that is the basis of all human morality.”
John F. Kennedy, Profiles in Courage
“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
“It is compromise that prevents each set of reformers from crushing the group at the other end of the political spectrum.”
John Fitzgerald Kennedy, Profiles in Courage
“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: Deluxe Modern Classic
“You don't have to have a college degree to serve. You don't have to make your subject and your verb agree to serve. You don't have to know about Plato and Aristotle to serve. You don't have to know Einstein's theory of relativity to serve. You only need a heart full of grace. A soul generated by love. And you can be that servant.”
John F. Kennedy, Profiles in Courage
“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: Deluxe Modern Classic
“Perhaps the twentieth-century Senator is not called upon to risk his entire future on one basic issue in the manner of Edmund Ross or Thomas Hart Benton. Perhaps our modern acts of political courage do not arouse the public in the manner that crushed the career of Sam Houston and John Quincy Adams. Still, when we realize that a newspaper that chooses to denounce a Senator today can reach many thousand times as many voters as could be reached by all of Daniel Webster’s famous and articulate detractors put together, these stories of twentieth-century political courage have a drama, an excitement—and an inspiration—all their own.”
John F. Kennedy, Profiles in Courage: Deluxe Modern Classic
“... there are few if any issues where all the truth and all the right and all the angels are on one side.”
John F. Kennedy, Profiles in Courage
“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
“In a lonely grave, forgotten and unknown, lies “the man who saved a President,” and who as a result may well have preserved for ourselves and posterity Constitutional government in the United States—the man who performed in 1868 what one historian has called “the most heroic act in American history, incomparably more difficult than any deed of valor upon the field of battle”—but a United States Senator whose name no one recalls: Edmund G. Ross of Kansas. The”
John F. Kennedy, Profiles in Courage: Deluxe Modern Classic
“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: Deluxe Modern Classic
“To be courageous, these stories make clear, requires no exceptional qualifications, no magic formula, no special combination of time, place and circumstance.”
John F. Kennedy, Profiles in Courage
“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: Deluxe Modern Classic
“Daniel Webster prefirió arriesgar su carrera y su reputación en lugar de poner en riesgo a la Unión.”
John F. Kennedy, Perfiles de Coraje
“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, Perfiles de Coraje
“Era «imposible», escribió Adams, conservar su escaño «sin ejercer la más libre libertad de mis acciones, bajo el control único y exclusivo de mi propio sentido de lo que es correcto».”
Anonymous, Perfiles de Coraje
“En tiempos de tanta exaltación es mucho más fácil avivar y alimentar las llamas de la discordia que sofocarlas, y el que aconseja moderación se arriesga a ser considerado que no cumple su deber con su partido.”
Anonymous, Perfiles de Coraje
“Ningún hombre puede sufrir demasiado, ni ningún hombre puede caer demasiado pronto, si sufre o cae en defensa de las libertades y la Constitución de su país.”
Anonymous, Perfiles de Coraje
“Desprecio la popularidad efímera”
John F. Kennedy, Perfiles de Coraje
“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: Deluxe Modern Classic
“No tienes que poseer un título universitario para servir. No tienes que hacer que tu sujeto y tu verbo coincidan para servir. No tienes que saber sobre Platón y Aristóteles para servir. No tienes que conocer la teoría de la relatividad de Einstein para servir. Solo necesitas un corazón lleno de gracia. Un alma que nazca del amor. Y puedes ser ese servidor.”
John F. Kennedy, Profiles in Courage
“¿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, Perfiles de Coraje
“Necesitamos lo mejor de muchos, no solo de unos pocos. Debemos luchar por la excelencia.”
Anonymous, Perfiles de Coraje
“Bonar Law afirmó: «No hay tal cosa como la guerra inevitable. Si estalla la guerra, será por el fracaso de la sabiduría humana».”
Anonymous, Perfiles de Coraje
“Él estaba convencido, al igual que Platón, de que la definición de la ciudadanía en una democracia es la participación en el gobierno y que, como escribió Francis Bacon: «Solo a Dios y a los ángeles les está reservado ser espectadores».”
Anonymous, Perfiles de Coraje
“Lo que ocurra con el país, y con el mundo, depende de lo que hagamos con lo que otros nos han legado.”
Anonymous, Perfiles de Coraje
“If there is a lesson from the lives of the men John Kennedy depicts in this book, if there is a lesson from his life and from his death, it is that in this world of ours none of us can afford to be lookers-on, the critics standing on the sidelines.”
John F. Kennedy, Profiles in Courage: Deluxe Modern Classic
“Thomas Hart Benton, el primer senador en servir treinta años consecutivos, alcanzó una prominencia que ningún otro senador de un nuevo estado podría reclamar, y defendió al Oeste con una energía ilimitada que ningún candidato opositor podía igualar.”
Anonymous, Perfiles de Coraje
“No seamos ciegos a nuestras diferencias; enfoquemos directamente la atención en nuestros intereses comunes y en los medios con los que se pueden resolver esas divergencias. Y si no podemos ponerles fin, al menos podremos contribuir a que el mundo sea seguro en aras de la diversidad. Porque, en última instancia, nuestro vínculo más común es que todos habitamos este pequeño planeta. Todos respiramos el mismo aire. A todos nos preocupa el futuro de nuestros hijos. Y todos somos mortales.”
John F. Kennedy, Profiles in Courage

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