Jfk Best Quotes

So basically be careful never to be too awesome or you will be mysteriously executed just like Martin Luther King and Gandhi and Abraham Lincoln and JFK and Malcolm X and Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse and... wow why are we so mean to our best people?

John F. Kennedy responded, as he often did when at his best, skillfully mixing dollops of wit with, self-deprecation, and the principle of not-really-going-near-the-question.

and line of cases. Justice Byron R. "Whizzer" White, a JFK appointee, dissented, calling Doe an act of "raw judicial power," as it took these decisions from the states and enshrined their determination in the Supreme Court's reasoning.

As I traveled the country promoting my book, I was asked by many people, ‘What are you trying to prove here? Lyndon Johnson is dead. He can’t be prosecuted. What is the point of this other than an academic exercise?’ Here is the point: The government does not always tell us the truth. In fact, the government seldom tells us the truth. If ONE citizen understands by reading my book that everything the government says must be regarded with a healthy dose of skepticism, then I will have achieved my goal. Perhaps the best analysis comes from former federal prosecutor and US Attorney David Marston, who wrote to me, “You have viewed the JFK assassination through the prism of a murder investigator’s first question, cui bono (who benefits)? The shocking answer is that the primary suspect has been hiding in plain sight for fifty years: LBJ.

The surname Kennedy means ‘ugly-head’. [He topped a 2009 poll to be named the best-looking President in US history, but JFK’s surname is actually the Old Irish epithet ceannéidigh, derived from ceann, meaning ‘head’, and éidigh, meaning ‘ugly’.]

He had spent the last five years, he [JFK] said ruefully, running for office, and he did not know any real public officials, people to run a government, serious men. The only ones he knew, he admitted, were politicians, and if this seemed a denigration of his own kind, it was not altogether displeasing to the older man. Politicians did need men to serve, to run the government. The implication was obvious. Politicians could run Pennsylvania and Ohio, and if they could not run Chicago they could at least deliver it. But politicians run the world? What did they know about the Germans, the French, the Chinese? He needed experts for that

But you know, the longer you listen to this abortion debate, the more you hear this phrase “sanctity of life”. You’ve heard that. Sanctity of life. You believe in it? Personally, I think it’s a bunch of shit. Well, I mean, life is sacred? Who said so? God? Hey, if you read history, you realize that God is one of the leading causes of death. Has been for thousands of years. Hindus, Muslims, Jews, Christians all taking turns killing each other ‘cause God told them it was a good idea. The sword of God, the blood of the land, vengeance is mine. Millions of dead motherfuckers. Millions of dead motherfuckers all because they gave the wrong answer to the God question. “You believe in God?” “No.” Boom. Dead. “You believe in God?” “Yes.” “You believe in my God? “No.” Boom. Dead. “My God has a bigger dick than your God!” Thousands of years. Thousands of years, and all the best wars, too. The bloodiest, most brutal wars fought, all based on religious hatred. Which is fine with me. Hey, any time a bunch of holy people want to kill each other I’m a happy guy. But don’t be giving me all this shit about the sanctity of life. I mean, even if there were such a thing, I don’t think it’s something you can blame on God. No, you know where the sanctity of life came from? We made it up. You know why? ‘Cause we’re alive. Self-interest. Living people have a strong interest in promoting the idea that somehow life is sacred. You don’t see Abbott and Costello running around, talking about this shit, do you? We’re not hearing a whole lot from Mussolini on the subject. What’s the latest from JFK? Not a goddamn thing. ‘Cause JFK, Mussolini and Abbott and Costello are fucking dead. They’re fucking dead. And dead people give less than a shit about the sanctity of life. Only living people care about it so the whole thing grows out of a completely biased point of view. It’s a self serving, man-made bullshit story. It’s one of these things we tell ourselves so we’ll feel noble. Life is sacred. Makes you feel noble. Well let me ask you this: if everything that ever lived is dead, and everything alive is gonna die, where does the sacred part come in? I’m having trouble with that. ‘Cuz, I mean, even with all this stuff we preach about the sanctity of life, we don’t practice it. We don’t practice it. Look at what we’d kill: Mosquitoes and flies. ‘Cause they’re pests. Lions and tigers. ‘Cause it’s fun! Chickens and pigs. ‘Cause we’re hungry. Pheasants and quails. ‘Cause it’s fun. And we’re hungry. And people. We kill people… ‘Cause they’re pests. And it’s fun! And you might have noticed something else. The sanctity of life doesn’t seem to apply to cancer cells, does it? You rarely see a bumper sticker that says “Save the tumors.”. Or “I brake for advanced melanoma.”. No, viruses, mold, mildew, maggots, fungus, weeds, E. Coli bacteria, the crabs. Nothing sacred about those things. So at best the sanctity of life is kind of a selective thing. We get to choose which forms of life we feel are sacred, and we get to kill the rest. Pretty neat deal, huh? You know how we got it? We made the whole fucking thing up! Made it up!

The Central Intelligence Agency, America’s best-known spy shop. In that fearful post-Joe McCarthy era, when assassinated JFK had publicly loved James Bond and secretly been entangled in covert intrigues like assassination plots against Cuba’s Fidel Castro outsourced to the Mafia by our spies, the CIA was a myth-shrouded invisible army. In those pre-Internet days before electronic books, Web sites with varied credibility, and search

From the year of his death, 1963, to the publication of Rosenhan’s study in 1973, the total resident population in state and county psychiatric hospitals dropped by almost 50 percent, from 504,600 to 255,000. Ten years later, the US psychiatric population would drop another 50 percent to 132,164. Today 90 percent of the beds available when JFK made his speech have closed as the country’s population has nearly doubled. Trouble is, for all of its idealism and promise, the dreams of community care were never actualized because the funds never materialized. The money was intended to follow the patients. It didn’t. The community care model at its very best provided nominal care to the least impaired. Those with the most severe forms of these disorders were ignored or cast aside.

I have felt things that no one should ever have to feel. I have seen things that no one should ever have to see. I have heard things that no one should ever have to hear. I have been beaten down so many times that It is reflexive to get back up immediately without any hesitation expecting another whack to come instantaneously. I have got up off the mat more times than what should be necessary. I know I will need to continue doing so many, many more times. I am prepared to do so and more without complaint or regret. It is outright exhausting. I keep experiencing this pain because 1 life is worth it. Life is awesome and is worth fighting for. Even 1 life is worth it. For 1 life to experience life is my mission. To quote 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, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win." So I will continue to feel, see and hear things that no parent should ever have to in order for 1 life to be able to experience this awesome life again.

All ten of the top ten presidents in C-SPAN’s survey were hackers. Only one, JFK, climbed a semblance of a traditional ladder; he served in both houses of Congress, but was a war hero and author of a Pulitzer Prize–winning book—clearly not the average ladder climber. Each of the men on this list worked hard in his career, learned and proved leadership through diverse experiences, and switched ladders multiple times. They continuously parlayed their current success for something more, and they didn’t give up when they lost elections (which most of them did). The ladder switching made them better at getting elected and better at the job. To be a good president, Wead says, “You’ve got to be able to think on your feet.” Stubbornness and tradition make for poor performance—as we see with Andrew Johnson and other presidents at the bottom of history’s rankings. The fact that our best presidents—and history’s other greatest overachievers—circumvented the system to get to the top speaks to what’s wrong with our conventional wisdom of paying dues and climbing the ladder. Hard work and luck are certainly ingredients of success, but they’re not the entire recipe. Senators and representatives, by contrast, generally play the dues-and-ladder game of hierarchy and formality. And they get stuck in the congressional spiderweb. “The people that go into Congress go step by step by step,” Wead explains. But presidents don’t. It begs the question: should we?

Well it had to be the Beatles, didn’t it? Totally unknown in the U.S. at the time, they could go completely unnoticed in Dallas. It was a brilliant scheme, and they were rewarded for their work with a lifetime of money and fame.” “Even Ringo,” muttered the tall man. “Especially Ringo,” Jimmy added. He cringed at the thought. It could just as easily have been Pete Best, if only he were a better shot.

Us yokels who majored in beer and getting the skirts off Tri-Delts bear no responsibility for Thoreau’s hippie jive or John Kenneth Galbraith’s nitwit economics or Henry Kissinger’s brown-nosing the Shah of Iran. None of us served as models for characters in that greasy Love Story book. Our best and brightest stick to running insurance agencies and don’t go around cozening the nation into Vietnam wars. It wasn’t my school that laid the educational groundwork for FDR’s demagoguery or JFK’s Bay of Pigs slough-off or even Teddy Roosevelt’s fool decision to split the Republican Party and let that buttinski Wilson get elected. You can’t pin the rap on us.

unceremoniously as “John F. Kennedy: The Photographic Archive of Cecil W. Stoughton.” I knew—even sight unseen—that this was no ordinary scrapbook collection of scratchy Polaroids and faded albums. No, this might be the treasure trove of one of Camelot’s court photographers, a man who had visually documented some of the most important events in the presidency of John F. Kennedy, including a secret party in New York City attended by the president and the most glamorous movie star of the time: Marilyn Monroe.

That was the best chance we had, Castro in Chile. There were these two guys right in front of Castro with the machine gun hidden in the camera. Right in front of him with a machine gun from here to there, but these two guys, these two—I want to qualify them—bastards,were in front of him and one was scared and the other was chicken. Right in front of Castro!” Bosch

it seemed rational that the Agency would undertake a measure of damage control, and it seemed natural that the Agency would call upon the one man who had developed the best contacts and who was its most sophisticated, subtle and successful media expert and manipulator: David Atlee Phillips. Soon a series of stories were planted in the press. Newsweek’s “Periscope” column said: “After studying FBI and other field investigations, the CIA has concluded that the Chilean secret police were not involved in the death of Orlando Letelier. . . .

Goulden from my time in Philadelphia. He was one of the best investigative reporters in town and was later made chief of the Philadelphia Inquirer’s Washington bureau.

(I came to suspect that Phillips may, indeed, have been one of the very best covert agents the CIA ever had. His former wife once told a friend, “He lies in his sleep.”)