The Uncommon Wisdom of JFK. Eds. Bill Adler and Tom Folsom.

The Uncommon Wisdom of JFK
Eds. Bill Adler and Tom Folsom
New York: Rugged Land, LLC
2003

Why read it? The following quotes are in the public record. John Kennedy was a prolific reader. He thought deeply about government and life. He fully appreciated that America was a model for free societies. If America failed, society based on freedom would also fail. He appreciated the transience of life and was fully conscious that the effects of a World War III could obliterate the earth. They were the times in which he lived and governed.

Sample ideas from the book: "If we are strong, our strength will speak for itself. If we are weak, words will be of no help." "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." "Every man is an enigma." "Can a nation organized and governed such as ours endure?" "If we fail, then freedom fails." "What we do in this country, the kind of society we build, that will tell whether freedom will be sustained around the world."

"The great trouble with American politics today is that we talk in slogans." "The world is very different now. For man holds in his mortal hands the power to abolish all forms of human poverty and all forms of human life." "Let us never negotiate out of fear, but let us never fear to negotiate." "All this will not be finished in the first one hundred days, nor will it be finished in the first one thousand days, nor in the life of this administration, nor even perhaps in our lifetime. But let us begin." "The President must know when to lead Congress, when to consult it, and when he should act alone." "The mere absence of war is not peace." "We want a peace in which we can truly beat our swords into plowshares and our hydrogen bombs into atomic reactors."

"Total war makes no sense in an age when a single nuclear weapon contains almost ten times the explosive force delivered by all the allied air forces in the Second World War." "Mankind must put an end to war, or war will put an end to mankind." "Freedom is not merely a word or an abstract theory, but the most effective instrument for advancing the welfare of man." "The weapons of war must be abolished before they abolish us." "A war today or tomorrow, if it led to nuclear war, would not be like any war in history. A full-scale nuclear exchange, lasting less than sixty minutes, with the weapons now in existence, could wipe out more than 300 million Americans, Europeans and Russians. And the survivors would envy the dead. For they would inherit a world so devastated by explosion and poison and fire that today we cannot even conceive of its horrors. We need to check the world's slide toward final annihilation."

Quote: "I am certain that after the dust of centuries has passed over our cities, we too will be remembered not for victories or defeats in battle or in politics, but for our contribution to the human spirit."