Great Throughts Treasury

"In the White House, the future rapidly becomes the past; and delay is itself a decision."

"A President does not have to be a great creative or innovative thinker, as helpful as that may be. For an almost endless flow of new ideas will almost certainly come to him and his real task is to discriminate and choose among them. Similarly, he does not personally have to be a great administrator, but he has to choose and guide those who are. He has to be as discriminating in his judgment of men as of ideas."

"Public opinion rarely considers the needs of the next generation or the history of the last. It is frequently hampered by myths and misinformation, by stereotypes and shibboleths, and by an innate resistance to innovation."

"A nation without credibility and moral authority cannot lead, because no one will follow."

"A speech is made great, not from the words used, but from the ideas conveyed. If the ideas, principles and values and substance of the speech are great, then it's going to be a great speech, even if the words are pedestrian. The words can be soaring, beautiful and eloquent but if the ideas are flat, empty or mean, it's not a great speech."

"Al Gore is not just whistling in the wind. Global warming is for real. Every scientist knows that now, and we are on our way to the destruction of every species on earth, if we don't pay attention and reverse our course."

"Don't worry about the fact that I can't see. I have more vision than the President of the United States."

"Everything evolved during those three-plus years that we were traveling the country together. He became a much better speaker. I became much more equipped to write speeches for him. Day after day after day after day, he's up there on the platform speaking, and I'm sitting in the audience listening, and I find out what works and what doesn't, what fits his style."

"Above all, we shall wage no more unilateral, ill-planned, ill-considered, and ill-prepared invasions of foreign countries that pose no actual threat to our security."

"Although JFK could be steely and stern when frustrated, he never lost his temper. When times were bad, he knew they would get better — when they were good, he knew they could get worse."

"For the great enemy of truth is very often not the lie — deliberate, contrived, and dishonest — but the myth — persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic. Too often we hold fast to the cliches of our forebears. We subject all facts to a prefabricated set of interpretations. We enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought."

"Consistently wise decisions can only be made by those whose wisdom is constantly challenged"

"During my 11 years with JFK, my most important national contributions — advising him on civil rights, on the decision to go to the moon and especially on the Cuban missile crisis — did not center on the speechwriting."

"I'm simply saying that there are advantages in sending a skilled diplomat who can always say, 'I'll get back to you on that, Mr. Minister'."

"In the more than four decades that have passed since his death, neither my activities as a lawyer nor those in international affairs have made much use of my speechwriting experience. Yet I have little doubt that, when my time comes, my obituary in the New York Times (misspelling my last name once again) will be captioned: 'Theodore Sorenson, Kennedy Speechwriter.'"

"I approached each speech draft as if it might someday appear under Kennedy's name in a collection of the world's great speeches."

"Four features of a good speech: 1. Clarity – achieved if you have a good outline. 2. Charity – praise the audience. 3. Brevity – JFK believed anything worth saying can be covered in a 20 minute speech. 4. Levity – as evidenced by Kennedy’s ironic wit."

"I believe in an America in which the fruits of productivity and prosperity are shared by all, by workers as well as owners, by those at the bottom as well as those at the top; an America in which the sacrifices required by national security are shared by all, by profiteers in the back offices as well as volunteers on the front lines."

"I think Democrats made a mistake running away from liberalism. Liberalism, uh, Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, John and Robert Kennedy - that's what the Democratic party ought to reach for."

"I wasn't involved in politics at all — until about the age of four."

"I think he's informing himself, reaching out and getting ideas and information and advice. I haven't the slightest doubt that internally taking shape in that marvelous brain of his is a philosophy of foreign affairs. But it would be premature to say that one is fully formed."

"If we can but tear the blindfold of self-deception from our eyes and loosen the gag of self-denial from our voices, we can restore our country to greatness."

"I still believe that the mildest and most obscure of Americans can be rescued from oblivion by good luck, sudden changes in fortune, sudden encounters with heroes. I believe it because I lived it."

"John F. Kennedy was a natural leader. It was no act — the secret of his magic appeal was that he had no magic at all."

"Military strength in reserve is better than military strength being reigned upon the other side including all of its innocent civilians."

"It was a feeling of hopelessness, of anger, of bitterness. That there was nothing we could do. There was nothing I could do."

"Our surest protection against assault from abroad has been not all our guards, gates and guns, or even our two oceans, but our essential goodness as a people. Our richest asset has been not our material wealth but our values."

"Number one, that it is smart to communicate and negotiate with your enemy instead of just waging war with bombs and weapons of mass destruction."

"It [Kennedy's affairs] was wrong, and he knew it was wrong, which is why he went to great lengths to keep it hidden. In every other aspect of his life, he was honest and truthful, especially in his job. His mistakes do not make his accomplishments less admirable; but they were still mistakes."

"Speechwriting really comes down to four words and five lines. The four words: brevity, levity, charity and clarity. Then the five lines are: 1: Outline. Absolutely indispensable, always the best place to start. 2: Headline. What do you want the headline to be? 3: Frontline. What's the most important point, what do you move up to the front? 4: Sideline. Put in a quotation from a poem, an allusion to history, a bit of eloquence or precedence from the past. 5: Bottom line. What is your conclusion?"

"Presidential candidates don't chew gum."

"Now people all across America are starting to believe in America again. We are coming back, back to the heights of greatness, back to America's proud role as a temple of justice and a champion of peace."

"Neither Kennedy nor any of us who worked with him were mythical characters who had magical powers, and we obviously had our share of mistakes."

"The good news, to relieve all this gloom, is that a democracy is inherently self-correcting. Here, the people are sovereign. Inept political leaders can be replaced. Foolish policies can be changed. Disastrous mistakes can be reversed."

"The ambassador was never present, but his presence was never absent."

"Two roads diverged in the Old Senate Office Building and I took the one less recommended, and that has made all the difference. The truth is more prosaic: I wanted a good job."

"The damage done to this country by its own misconduct in the last few months and years, to its very heart and soul, is far greater and longer lasting than any damage that any terrorist could possibly inflict upon us."

"That's what I'm proudest of. Never had this country, this world, faced such great danger. You and I wouldn't be sitting here today if that had gone badly."

"There was nothing like that three-four year period where, just the two of us, we were traveling across the United States. That's when I got to know the man."

"The American people still believe in peace, human rights and justice; they are still a generous, fair-minded, open-minded people."

"We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children’s future. And we are all mortal."

"We have convinced over one billion members of the Islamic faith that we are prejudiced against their religion, that we would deny them freedom of religion, that we want suppress their culture and invade their governments."

"We choose to go to the moon. 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."

"We have treated our most serious adversaries, such as Iran and North Korea, in the most juvenile manner - by giving them the silent treatment. In so doing, we have weakened, not strengthened, our bargaining position and our leadership."

"We need not renounce the use of conventional force. We will be ready to repel any clear and present danger that poses a genuine threat to our national security and survival."

"We must face the fact that the United States is neither omnipotent nor omniscient — that we are only 6 percent of the world’s population — that we cannot impose our will upon the other 94 percent of mankind — that we cannot right every wrong or reverse each adversity — and that therefore there cannot be an American solution to every world problem."

"We shall listen, not lecture; learn, not threaten. We will enhance our safety by earning the respect of others and showing respect for them. In short, our foreign policy will rest on the traditional American values of restraint and empathy, not on military might."

"We traveled together to all 50 states, most of them more than once, initially just the two of us."

"We remain essentially a nation under siege."

"We will always apply the same principles of collective security, prudent caution, and superior weaponry that enabled us to peacefully prevail in the long cold war against the Soviet Union."