John F. Kennedy on Education
← Back to John F. Kennedy ProfileIn his 1963 Vanderbilt University address, John F. Kennedy argued for the essential interdependence of freedom and education, warning of the dangers of one without the other.
“Liberty without learning is always in peril; learning without liberty is always in vain.”
In his 1958 Smith College commencement address, John F. Kennedy invoked Goethe's imagery of the anvil and hammer to challenge graduates to actively shape society.
“I ask that you offer to the political arena, and to the critical problems of our society which are decided therein, the benefit of the talents which society has helped to develop in you. I ask you to decide, as Goethe put it, whether you will be an anvil—or a hammer. The question is whether you are to be a hammer—whether you are to give to the world in which you were reared and educated the broadest possible benefits of that education.”