John F. Kennedy Quotes

A modern democracy cannot allow its citizens to be exonerated

Republican People, understand me more profoundly, I condemn all the excesses of misguided patriotism. Each one of us must be responsible for public security; none of us can permit ourselves acts of violence that would represent the fury of vengeance rather than love for the motherland.

Freedom requires civil responsibility.

It's the duty of any government: where there is disregard of the law, that law and order must be instituted.

There can be no peace without law.

There can be no civil peace without the rule of law.

The power that keeps cities of men together Is noble preservation of law.

My business is that of every other good citizen - to uphold the law.

There is an initial modesty in Liberalism. Liberalism was not originally a doctrine of "man is the king." No, it was a very modest attempt to build a space where people could live together without slaughtering one another.

Liberty is not to be enjoyed, indeed it cannot exist, without the habits of just subordination; it consists, not so much in removing all restraint from the orderly, as in imposing it on the violent.

The [nonprofit] sector enhances our creativity, enlivens our communities, nurtures individual responsibility, stirs life at the grassroots, and reminds us that we were born free.

For as laws are necessary that good manners be preserved, so there is need of good manners that law may be maintained.

America will be a country of generosity and warmth, but we will also be a country of law and order.

Other human beings have a right to peace and happiness that is equal to our own; therefore we have a responsibility to help those in need.

Men and women who live in America...have a responsibility greater than that yet borne by any other people. Theirs the duty, the obligation to preserve not only the Constitution of the land but the Christian principles from which sprang that immortal document.

I don't live in an outlaw world and I don't carry a gun.

It used to be the boast of free men that, so long as they kept within the bounds of the known law, there was no need to ask anybody's permission or to obey anybody's orders. It is doubtful whether any of us can make this claim today.

Those who have the ability to take action have the responsibility to take action.

We must nurture tolerance, collective wisdom, and democracy.

Civility isn't just some optional value in a multicultural, multistate democratic republic. Civility is the key to civilization.

Writers throughout the ages have one weapon, which is literature, but they also have their responsibilities as a citizen when literature does not seem to suffice. I mean, they are not mutually exclusive. One continues to write anyway but if you are called out to demonstrate, if people are being killed in the streets, it's hardly the moment to go for your pen and paper, you know, help in one way or the other.

Man cannot be exempted from his divinely-imposed obligations toward civil society, and the representatives of authority have the right to coerce him when he refuses without reason to do his duty. Society, on the other hand, cannot defraud man of his God-granted right... Nor can society systematically void these rights by making their use impossible.

Our culture is at a critical cusp - a time that requires that we define what it means to be a citizen in a democracy. Within our nation we need to foster a greater sense of collective responsibility.

We will not let governments off the hook. We will look to civil society to help us, to pin governments, to what they have committed to here. And we will report on it.

Peace is a national issue, not only government's responsibility.