John F. Kennedy on Time
← Back to John F. Kennedy ProfileDelivered during the 25th anniversary of Social Security, Kennedy's "We celebrate the past to awaken the future" highlights the importance of learning from history to shape progress.
“We celebrate the past to awaken the future.”
“My call is not to those who believe they belong to the past. My call is to those who believe in the future.”
Addressing a polarized political landscape in 1958, John F. Kennedy urged Loyola College alumni to transcend partisan divides and embrace collective responsibility for the future.
“Let us not despair but act. Let us not seek the Republican answer or the Democratic answer but the right answer. Let us not seek to fix the blame for the past — let us accept our own responsibility for the future.”
“There are those who regard this history of past strife and exile as better forgotten. But, to use the phrase of Yeats, let us not casually reduce "that great past to a trouble of fools." For we need not feel the bitterness of the past to discover its meaning for the present and the future.”
“But Goethe tells us in his greatest poem that Faust lost the liberty of his soul when he said to the passing moment: "Stay, thou art so fair." And our liberty, too, is endangered if we pause for the passing moment, if we rest on our achievements, if we resist the pace of progress. Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past are certain to miss the future.”
Referencing a possibly misattributed anecdote about French Marshal Lyautey, John F. Kennedy used the image of planting a slow-growing tree to advocate for long-term thinking.
“In its [knowledge's] light, we must think and act not only for the moment but for our time. I am reminded of the story of the great French Marshal Lyautey, who once asked his gardener to plant a tree. The gardener objected that the tree was slow-growing and would not reach maturity for a hundred years. The Marshal replied, "In that case, there is no time to lose, plant it this afternoon".”