Top 265 Kennedy Quotes

I’m trying to finish my book on the Kennedy assassination.

Kennedy was a man who liked writers and even I got invited to the White House.

I don’t know if my mum and President Kennedy ever dated, but they were friends and there are some letters from him that she kept – sweet and innocent letters saying, ‘Saw you in the play the other night and you were fantastic.’

I was singing a lot of waltzes. And I was with Jerry Kennedy, my producer, and he was playing me some songs, and he said, hey, I want to play you this song that I’m going to get Jackie Ward to record.

Senator, I served with Jack Kennedy, I knew Jack Kennedy. Jack Kennedy was a friend of mine. Senator, you’re no Jack Kennedy.

Compared with other recent presidents whose stumbles and failures have assaulted the national self-esteem, memories of Kennedy continue to give the country faith that its better days are ahead. That’s been reason enough to discount his limitations and remain enamored of his presidential performance.

Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government asked me to serve as a fellow at its Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics, and Public Policy. After my varied and celebrated career in television, movies, publishing, and the lucrative world of corporate speaking, being a fellow at Harvard seemed, frankly, like a step down.

Melania rarely wears American labels, with the exception of Ralph Lauren, who created a duplication of a Jackie Kennedy look, which was basically a costume anyway.

What they’re not doing is marketing the Dead Kennedys in the spirit of what the band stood for.

Even though Jack Kennedy and I were about the same age and lived in the same neighborhood and attended the same elementary school, our paths seldom crossed during the years he lived in Brookline. I’m sure that in time, I would have gotten to know him better if he hadn’t moved away.

RFK was a compelling figure because he was willing to challenge his audiences, and in turn connect with them in a unique way. Kennedy showed that our values define us and can inspire others to believe in the possibility of change and a better society.

The fact that President-elect Kennedy would be the first Catholic president did not sit well with many Americans. There was a fear that, as president, Kennedy’s decisions would be based on his religion and dictated by the pope.

There are no new facts about the Kennedys, only new attitudes, a literature that, like the automobile industry, puts new bodies on old chassis.

We need Big Ideas, as we are in a time of small people, and as Kennedy showed with Apollo, doing something grand in space is the biggest. At a time of huge national doubt and fear of losing our leadership as a nation to others, it focused us, gave us something positive and inspired a generation.

I was in bands, like everyone else, when I was 16, 17; I was a little skater listening to Dead Kennedy’s and Steel Pole Bath Tub. It was through early 90s Hip Hop that I found my way to Soul and Funk, and then out the other side into beats.

Kennedy saw the presidency as the vital center of government, and a president’s primary goal as galvanizing commitments to constructive change. He aimed to move the country and the world toward a more peaceful future, not just through legislation but through inspiration.

In 1960, John F. Kennedy rode a superior televised debate performance to victory over Richard Nixon.

The Irish people were willing to take me at face value, to give me the benefit of the doubt because I was a Kennedy. I think being a Kennedy was extremely helpful.

In two months Joseph Kennedy had taken over my entire life, and I trusted him implicitly to make the most of it.

The work I did on ‘Killing Kennedy’ was very meticulous and, in some ways, actually tedious. It was hard work because there is so much known about John F. Kennedy and Lee Harvey Oswald. To try to distill that into a clear narrative that’s interesting and tells two great stories was a real challenge.

As much as I liked and admired the various members of the Kennedy family, my first loyalty was to Jackie.

I have three favorite politicians: Reagan, Truman, and Bobby Kennedy – Bobby for showing remarkable political courage despite being loathed by many on both sides.

The fact that a Republican is in the late Senator Kennedy’s old seat probably must have him rolling in his grave, probably spilling his drink.

It’s Kennedy’s war, Vietnam. Lyndon Johnson got all the flak, but it’s Kennedy’s war.

To the developing world, Cuba has been a symbol of sovereignty and resistance and a supporter of revolution – for good or bad. From the Missile Crisis to the anti-apartheid movement, from the Kennedys to Obama era, this small island has put itself at the center of world events.

The lifelong health problems of John F. Kennedy constitute one of the best-kept secrets of recent U.S. history – no surprise, because if the extent of those problems had been revealed while he was alive, his presidential ambitions would likely have been dashed.

I would be with a bunch of Kennedy fans watching the debate, and their comment would be, ‘He’s really slaughtering Nixon.’ Then we would all go to another apartment, and the Nixon fans would say, ‘How do you like the shellacking he gave Kennedy?’

When you look at Kennedy and Nixon, TV played a crucial part in Kennedy’s popularity. He was incredibly photogenic, while Nixon was this scowling figure. American viewers judged him on his appearance on TV.

Like John Kennedy in 1960, Obama combines youth, vigor, and good looks with the promise of political change. Like Kennedy, he grew up in unusual circumstances that distance him from ordinary American life.

I look at it like this: that if Shakespeare were alive today, he would have written two or three plays about the Kennedy family, and actors would traditionally play JFK like they Hamlet or King Lear. They just would. I mean, people have played JFK, and they’ll play him long after I have.

I covered Kennedy when she was three years old and the darling daughter of President Kennedy who doted on her and whose mother did everything to protect her from the prying press.

Kennedy said that if we had nuclear war we’d kill 300 million people in the first hour. McNamara, who is a good businessman and likes to save, says it would be only 200 million.

Kennedy had been assassinated a month or so before. So we walked to the grave of John Kennedy and ended our walking symbolically at the Arlington National Cemetery.

I don’t consider myself part of the Kennedy family. It’s almost like a little point of honor. I’m a DiFalco at the end of the day. An Italian-American from upstate New York.

I think he Oswald felt he was a failure and for the United States and for President Kennedy and all of us. He knew he was a failure at everything he tried, frustrated, with a very sad life, but he was a Marxist.

It is the ’94 race which in many ways allowed Ted Kennedy to become his own man rather than the ‘third brother.’ He had to reach down and win it on his own.

Fortunately, President Kennedy and Robert Kennedy disagreed with the estimate and chose a course of action less ambitious and aggressive than recommended by their advisers.

The murder of John Kennedy in broad daylight in the streets of an American city remains, to me, an unsolved crime.

Many people remember that spirit that President Kennedy summoned forth. Many people look to me as somebody who embodies that sense of possibility.

My allegiance to the GOP was cemented during the 1980s, when I was in high school and college and Ronald Reagan was in the White House. For me, Reagan was what John F. Kennedy had been to an earlier generation: an inspirational figure who shaped my worldview.

Until Eleanor Roosevelt, there was only one or two First Ladies in all of American history who made an impact, who people could even have recognized or identified. And it’s really only been since Jackie Kennedy that there’s been this idea that the family life of the president is such a central thing.

To those who don’t want the truth about Kennedy’s assassination to become known, the very repetition of a charge lends it a certain credibility, since people have a tendency to believe that where there’s smoke, there’s fire.

I loved the Kennedy Center Honors because you just sit there, smile, wave, and cry.

Kennedy was like a rock star. Carter was the earnest outsider at the height of Washington cynicism. Clinton was a bad boy who proposed his ‘third way’ of Democratic politics, and Obama brought hope and change to a country that so desperately needed it.

In the late Fifties and early Sixties, opposition to state terror and aggression and torture and so on was zero. That was a horrible time: the massive Kennedy terror operation against Cuba, the first attacks on Vietnam in 1962, the imposition of national security states in South America.

When Jackie Kennedy wanted to wear her favourite European designers, she was told no. She had to start working with brands like Adolfo, who had to create Chanel knock-offs because that’s what she wanted to wear.

Music is more difficult – try naming a political band. The Dead Kennedys. The Dead Kennedys are political, but they are more funny than they are political.

The fact is that we would have had comprehensive health care now, had it not been for Ted Kennedy’s deliberately blocking the legislation that I proposed in 1978 or ’79.

The party of Kennedy is also the party of Eastland. The party of Javits is also the party of Goldwater.

Every year since 1990, the Gallup poll has asked Americans to assess all the presidents since John F. Kennedy. And every year, Kennedy comes out on top.

I’m like an ’80s kid. I was born in the mid-’70s. By the time the ’80s kicked in, I’m listening to Dead Kennedys, but I’m also listening to Simple Minds.

Media runs the world, and it all changed, I think, when the debate between Kennedy and Nixon happened, and first of all we saw them on television, and that changed everything.

I decided that I was going to be the Kennedy who makes her own name and finds her own job and works like a dog. My comeuppance was when Arnold got elected – I became the Kennedy who was married to the governor.

I have absolutely no intention of marrying Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis.

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.

Triple H the new Vince Kennedy McMahon. He smart to know who good for business.

Listen, I’m a proud Democrat. My heroes are the Kennedy brothers and Martin Luther King. And I don’t apologize for that and never will.

When President Kennedy set us on a path to the Moon in the 1960s, he knew exactly why – to produce a photo-op that would clearly show America would be the winner in the decades-long battle of political systems called the Cold War.

When President Kennedy took office, I was in the midst of my education.

I used to think Cape Wind was a great idea. That was when Ted Kennedy was alive and railing about how he might spill his Chivas if he had to keep maneuvering the Mya around all those noisy seagull-murdering wind turbines. Anything Ted Kennedy was against, I was for.

The assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr., and Robert F. Kennedy led directly to the passage of a historic law, the Gun Control Act of 1968.

When I was running the Troubadour, there was this transition from the classic singer/songwriter Jackson Browne types to bands like Black Flag, the Dead Kennedys, and Fear. Those are just some that come to mind. Oh, and Adam Ant! The Fear fans wanted to ‘crush’ the Ants. These guys hated each other.

In 1962, war was avoided by Khrushchev’s willingness to accept Kennedy’s hegemonic demands.

When President Kennedy challenged Americans to go to the moon, the question wasn’t whether we’d get there, it was only when we’d get there.

Both Kennedy and Obama exuded a dash of glamour in their roles as commander-in-chief and became the darlings of Hollywood. As president, each brought to the White House a fashionable and accomplished First Lady, two adorable young children and scene-stealing pets.

I don’t want a headline saying ‘Kennedy suggests this or implies that.’

In 1962, President Kennedy succeeded in captivating Americans by explaining the advantages of being the first country to reach the moon and the dangers of allowing another nation to beat us there.

I want to be the first. If they’d let me go to the moon, I’d crawl all the way to Cape Kennedy just to do it. I’d like to go to the moon, but I don’t want to be the second man to go there.

You’re not a baby boomer if you don’t have a visceral recollection of a Kennedy and a King assassination, a Beatles breakup, a U.S. defeat in Vietnam, and a Watergate.

It is essential for politicians to make a connection with us, as Franklin Roosevelt did, as Teddy Roosevelt did, as John F. Kennedy did, as Ronald Reagan did.

Hillary had never run for office before, but she decided to give it a try. She began her campaign the way she always does new things, by listening and and learning. And after a tough battle, New York elected her to the seat once held by another outsider, Robert Kennedy.

I’ve knocked out any number of Democrats using ads associating them with the brand toxicity of Reid, Pelosi, and Obama, and before that Ted Kennedy, Barney Frank, and others.

When I came back to Washington to be The Times’ chief congressional correspondent in 1991, I was looking for a book subject, and Ted Kennedy stood out for two reasons.

I told them how excited I would be to go into space and how thrilled I was when Alan Shepard made his historic flight, and when John Kennedy announced on the news that the men had landed safely on the moon, and how jealous I was of those men.

I see a direct line between Kennedy and Richard Nixon and the opening to China and the detente with the Soviet Union.

Much as I cared for Joseph Kennedy, he was a classic example of that person in the arts with lots of brains and drive but little taste or talent.

I was terrible in my first play. After that experience, I had to face that I wasn’t good enough to play with the big boys. I had to go away and learn, so I worked in regional theater for three years. I even understudied at the Kennedy Center.

I won’t mince words: President Donald Trump’s inauguration means it is more important than ever that Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights redouble its commitment to the full scope of our humanitarian and social justice mission.

‘The Warmth of the Sun’ was a very beautiful song that Brian and I wrote in the time period associated with President Kennedy’s assassination. We didn’t write words about that, but it was around that time we recorded that song, and there’s a lot of emotion involved there.

I worked in the Senate in the 1970s. I worked for the Labor, Public Welfare Committee, and we had Ted Kennedy and my old boss, Bill Hathaway, and Walter Mondale.

In 1974, when I started working with the material that became ‘Horses,’ a lot of our great voices had died. We’d lost Jimi Hendrix and Jim Morrison and Janis Joplin, and people like Robert Kennedy, Martin Luther King and Malcolm X.

I was doing this children’s theater play, and it was non-Equity. We were out of town to do it at the Kennedy Center, and it was always kind of, ‘Well, the producers may have to turn this into Equity,’ and that’s what happened. It was kind of a silly children’s theater play, but that’s how I got my card.

The argument that John F. Kennedy was a closet peacenik, ready to give up on what the Vietnamese call the ‘American War’ upon re-election, received its most farcical treatment in Oliver Stone’s ‘JFK.’

Our true remembrance to President Kennedy is in our actions to honor the unspoken words and finish the unfinished work today and tomorrow and for as long as it takes.

Bill Clinton told me that when he was 14, he shook John Kennedy’s hand, and that inspired him to be president.

You know, at parties, people always ask, ‘Where were you when Kennedy was shot?’ Well, I don’t have an alibi!

Kennedy cooked the soup that Johnson had to eat.

I’ve been a fascinated observer of grand public funerals since I was a kid, starting with the life-altering black-and-white images of President John F. Kennedy’s funeral.

Jackie Kennedy was the most appropriately dressed first lady we’ve ever had. You can see how lasting Jackie’s style is.

The result of being a Kennedy is that I have extraordinary opportunities that I wouldn’t otherwise have.

John F. Kennedy, the man I had thought would define the political ideal for the rest of my days, was suddenly gone in the senseless violence of a single moment.

So, I think that Marilyn, what she gave the world, and in many ways Kennedy too, was that they had dreams and they didn’t allow anybody to take away their dreams.

There has always been tension between reporters and the administration, particularly when it comes to war in the modern era. You can go to Kennedy or Johnson and see that they weren’t happy with David Halberstam or Morley Safer.

Bobby Kennedy’s conduct toward Lyndon Johnson was childish and despicable. As the years went on, he displayed nasty, self-pitying, and messianic qualities that would have made him a dangerously authoritarian president.

The Kennedy Center Honors reflects our humanity and higher purpose. We are a great nation, in part, because we value culture.

People always ask what’s it like to grow up as a Kennedy. It’s a family. It’s big, it’s large, it’s amazing. You’ve got strong personalities with strong opinions. And we’ll come out differently on some of those opinions.

I don’t read a lot of fiction, but one of my favorite authors is William Kennedy; his books, to me, almost read like historical dramas because the mythologies are so detailed as he wove fiction with the factual history of Albany.

In America, politicians do whatever to get re-elected, and a lot of decisions that were being made at that time by Kennedy were certain not to get him re-elected.

The people who have impacted the world didn’t live long. Martin Luther King. John F. Kennedy. These people who impact the world were not old people, but they lived so effectively that we cannot erase them from history.

I am the man who accompanied Jacqueline Kennedy to Paris, and I have enjoyed it.

Ted Kennedy’s inspiration will loom large over our politics for years to come, uplift us in the healthcare fight, and help to achieve his dream of liberty and justice for all.

Smash together the Grammys, Oscars, Emmys, and Tonys, and you get the Green Room at the Kennedy Center Honors.

The Kennedys are our royals.

It’s funny that there was so much disturbance about having a Catholic in the White House with Kennedy, and when we finally get a religion in the White House that’s causing a lot of conflicts, and concerns, and disturbances for a lot of people, it’s in the Bush Administration.

People don’t realize what they had till it’s gone. Like President Kennedy, there was no one like him, the Beatles, and my man Elvis Presley. I was the Elvis of boxing.

Kennedy is remembered as a success mainly because of what came after: Johnson and Vietnam. Nixon and Watergate.

The grand jury, composed of 12 eminent New Orleans citizens, heard our evidence and indicted the defendant for participation in a conspiracy to assassinate John Kennedy.

I’ve been obsessed with the Kennedys since I was a child, and Bobby Kennedy is, hands down, my favorite among them.

Joe Kennedy isn’t in the habit of having incompetents around. I wouldn’t have lasted three months if I didn’t have some ability.

Every time we’ve had a pro-growth fundamental tax reform, be it under President Reagan, President Kennedy – you can even go all the way back to President Coolidge – we have seen paychecks increase, economic growth be ignited, and, actually, more revenues come into the government.

I have seen periods of progress followed by reaction. I have seen the hopes and aspirations of Negroes rise during World War II, only to be smashed during the Eisenhower years. I am seeing the victories of the Kennedy and Johnson Administrations destroyed by Richard Nixon.

With the sole exception of President Bill Clinton, whose ‘bridge to the 21st century’ evoked the vision and optimism of other great Democratic presidents of the 20th century, such as FDR and John F. Kennedy, pessimism about America’s economic future has been the hallmark of modern progressivism.

I had been in so many towns and cities in America with John Kennedy, but I was not with him in Dallas, Texas, on November 21, 1963.

It’s just I hate reading the description ‘offbeat’ about a character in a script, because I, along with Seth Green, Jamie Kennedy and a few others, have cornered the market on ‘offbeat.’

Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights supports youth reentry projects because my father cared deeply about children and young people involved in the juvenile justice system, part of his focus while serving as attorney general.

I think the public can t accept the idea that someone as inconsequential as Oswald could have killed someone as consequential as Kennedy. They don t want to believe the world is that chaotic. It is.

My sense of religion is Einstein’s sense of relativity. I don’t believe in God. I believe that energy never dies. So the possibility exists that you might be breathing in some other form of Moses or Buddha or Muhammad or Bobby Kennedy or Roosevelt or Martin Luther King or Jesus.

In ‘Charade,’ there was a big fight. George Kennedy was playing one of his first big heavy roles; he had a hook for a hand, and he was real ugly. Cary Grant was Cary Grant. They were on a slanted roof, a very exciting fight, and we agreed there shouldn’t be any music, just the grunts and the action.

So much of the deep lingering sadness over President Kennedy’s assassination is about the unfinished promise: unspoken speeches, unfulfilled hopes, the wondering about what might have been.

We need the kind of leadership exemplified by President Kennedy to just do it! But we must do it as good stewards, aggressively exerting control over the moon. We can best do this by going there.

Whatever my party affiliation, I will continue to be guided by President Kennedy’s statement that sometimes party asks too much.

There’s no question that Kennedy was an utter failure as a passer of laws during his proverbial thousand days.

Tim Kennedy is one of the toughest guys in my opinion.

Sen. Edward Kennedy knows very directly. Senator Kennedy and I talked on several occasions prior to the war that my view was that the best evidence that I had seen was that Iraq indeed had weapons of mass destruction.

I’m not comparing myself to Bobby Kennedy by any stretch, but he was opposed by the liberal establishment, too. Eleanor Roosevelt was the biggest opponent to him running.

I enjoyed working with Ted Kennedy.

Nobody understood how to use television for his own purposes better than Nixon, despite his poor showing against John F. Kennedy in the televised presidential debate.

I can tell you where I was when Kennedy was shot – which was in the common room at school. I heard about it on the old valve radio. At the time of Armstrong’s landing, I was at university rehearsing a play.

We don’t have the capability today to put a human being in space of any kind, shape or form, which is absolutely, totally unacceptable when we got the greatest flying machine in the world sitting down at Kennedy in a garage there with nothing to do.

There was something punk rock about Bobby Kennedy not going where the pollsters said or where consultants said. He was unmoored from what was safe or easy.

I know that Oswald killed Kennedy. Now, was he pushed? Encouraged to do it by outsiders? Possibly. Possibly. Was he sitting down with Fidel Castro? No.

The traditional practice is that the justices don’t ask the attorney general any questions, so as not to embarrass him. But Bobby Kennedy had let them know that he didn’t mind if they asked him questions and they did.

There was a man who was an associate of jimmy Hoffa, who testified against Hoffa in his trial down in Tennessee. We had information from him that he and Hoffa did, in fact, discuss the planning of an assassination conspiracy against Bobby Kennedy.

I knew who Jackie Kennedy was in terms of being the wife of JFK and being a clothes horse, and I knew that she later married Onassis, but I had a very, very vague idea of who he was.

I remember someone once asked Jack Kennedy why he was paying such close attention to the renovation of the square across from the White House, and he said, ‘It may be the only thing my presidency is remembered for.’

The Kennedys were very organized. Dinner was always served at 7:15, and if you were a minute late, it really wasn’t worth it. In my family, you never knew when dinner was going to be. It could be at 7, or it could be at 10.

Judicial Watch is pleased that Justice Anthony Kennedy’s retirement from the Supreme Court will provide President Trump another opportunity to nominate a constitutional conservative who will honor the Constitution and the rule of law, rather than legislate from the bench.

If you’re at Kennedy Space Center, the closest you’re going to get to a rocket going off is like three and a half miles.

Well, I don’t think any of the Republicans have expressed any interest in supporting the vision of Robert Kennedy at all. At least I haven’t seen that.

I was kind of a strange child. My parents knew early on that something must have been wrong with me. I crawled backwards until I was two, but had Kennedy’s inaugural address memorized by the time I was six.

I’m a product of the Kennedy era. Kennedy’s Inaugural plus the accident of Dean Rusk brought me into the government. Those were my values.

Since President Kennedy signed the Equal Pay Act in 1963, the gap between men and women’s earnings has narrowed by less than a half-cent per year. At this rate, American women will have to wait until 2062 to bring home the same salary as their male counterparts.

When Kennedy said, ‘Let’s go to the moon,’ we didn’t yet have a vehicle that wouldn’t kill you on launch. He said we’ll land a man on the moon in eight years and bring him back. That was an audacious goal to put forth in front of the American people.

President and Mrs. Kennedy would walk into the East Room with their honored guests, preceded by the military color guard, who then posted their flags behind the receiving line. This ceremony never failed to move all of us, no matter how many times the staff witnessed it.

Kennedy invited us into the White House-the first time in the history of the White House picketers had been invited inside. This made front page headlines.

The first Chanel jacket that I saw – that I knew was Chanel – was on TV. It was on Mrs. Kennedy – the pink one.

I will read anything at all by Kate Atkinson, Daniel Woodrell, and William Kennedy, who are all fearless.

Ted Kennedy was in the Senate for 40 years. Tip O’Neill for 35 years. John Kerry in the Senate for 30 some odd years. It does take time to become effective.

If Obama’s vision of the public sector is socialism, then so too were the visions of Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, and Richard Nixon.

I’m a very boring person, and all I do is want to paint and to record what I feel moves me or what interests me, and that can be in the form of a pig or in the form of President Kennedy.

John Kennedy won the first televised presidential debate among those watching it, while Richard Nixon won among those listening on the radio.

I moved to Naples, Florida, and by 15 I was into punk: Green Day, Rancid, NOFX, Operation Ivy. Along with the classic punk bands, like the Sex Pistols, the Clash, the Misfits, Dead Kennedys, Minor Threat – all those bands that you get into when you’re first getting into punk.

I’ve learned to appreciate the thinking of John Kennedy.

Most people give Kennedy a passing grade, a good grade on the Cuban Missile Crisis handling, but what they don’t realize, if he had had strength, if he had showed strength before, there would never have been a Cuban Missile Crisis.

It is clear that the radical left has taken over the Democratic Party, leaving behind the party of John F. Kennedy.

I believe history will come to view 9/11 as an event on par with November 22, 1963, the date on which John F. Kennedy was murdered, cutting short a presidency that was growing ever more promising. Dreams died that day in Dallas; it is easy to imagine the 1960s turning out rather differently had President Kennedy lived.

When I was a kid, Eisenhower had been President forever, and all of a sudden, everything in the world was all about Jack Kennedy. I was 12, interested in politics; my father was from Massachusetts, had an accent like Kennedy.

There have not been children of comparable youth in the White House since the Kennedy era.

I actually knew Adlai Stevenson and Jack and Bobby Kennedy.

If you’re a Kennedy and you go to Italy or you go to Argentina, you’re treated as royalty. And in the United States, we’re endlessly fascinated by the family.

I got into the Kennedy White House because at the time I was president of the Women’s National Press Club, and they assigned me to cover the early days of the Kennedy campaign. Jackie especially. Everyone was interested in the family.

Kennedy had made a mess in Cuba at the Bay of Pigs. He had to do something to look good. The Apollo program of going to the Moon was quite a goal.

Whether it’s Jack Kennedy or Bill Clinton or others, the personal lives do come into play, and people do judge you for that.

The energy of the Kennedy years was completely compelling… I had a sense of a generous society eager to change the world. Idealism was very contagious. So that’s why I went to America. I didn’t intend to stay.

I just find Bobby Kennedy’s short campaign for president so inspiring because his rhetoric identified what America can be like if we care about each other.

Our Family is deeply honoured to see the Irish Government taking this enormous interest in the development of the Kennedy Homestead Visitor attraction.

John F. Kennedy brought style and charisma to the White House and a first family that captivated the country: a handsome, witty president, an elegant first lady, and two adorable young children.

I think there are good men and women in all decades. We’ve grown cynical. And look at what we do to all our heroes: Churchill, FDR, Kennedy, they all had affairs. But heroic things happen every day.

Ted Kennedy was not terribly effective when he first became a senator.

I never close the door on my company. WWE always there for the legend, and I love my boss the Mr. Vince Kennedy McMahon forever. He always show me that I am part of WWE family.

Somebody had fired a shot at the President, and I had to get myself between the shooter and the President and Mrs. Kennedy. Nothing else mattered.

When I met Jack Kennedy, he was a serious young man with a dream. He was not a womanizer, not as I understood the term.

Since the emergence of the Republican Party, only two Democratic presidents, Franklin Roosevelt and John Kennedy, have been followed by Democrats, and both FDR and JFK died in office, so their successors ran as incumbents.

Before the Kennedys were elected, there had been older Presidents. Then here was this devastatingly attractive young couple with two beautiful children. They were so intelligent, graceful, gracious and funny. They enjoyed life so much. That’s what caught America’s eye.

In terms of preparation, if there’s some historical context that’s needed, I do like to read a lot. Working on Joe Kennedy for ‘Boardwalk,’ I read a couple of biographies on him. It’s nice to have a broader context of the man outside of where the show is coming from.

Which I would’ve done ’cause I volunteered for the draft which meant that I only had to do two years. But when the Cubans had missiles in the Canal and Kennedy made the extension, I was one of the ones who had enough time to be extended.

No matter what I do, my songs come out in a certain style, and if that sounds like Dead Kennedys, then there’s probably a reason for it. Don’t forget, I wrote most of those songs, music and lyrics.

I could do John Wayne, Jack Benny, Jack Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson and entertain my friends. But I never seriously considered it as a career choice.

A white male Mormon millionaire was not gonna beat Ted Kennedy in Massachusetts, but someone deserved to go out there and give him a real run for his money.

John Kennedy really did extend the reach of the American people and said, like Lincoln said in a way, that our reach is farther than our grasp – and we should aim high.

Eisenhower was quite supportive of Kennedy and Johnson in terms of foreign policy.

The CIA could not face up to the American people and admit that its former employees had conspired to assassinate the President; so from the moment Kennedy’s heart stopped beating, the Agency attempted to sweep the whole conspiracy under the rug.

I would say that without any doubt he’s the killer – the law says beyond a reasonable doubt and to a moral certainty which I – there’s no question that he was the killer of President Kennedy.

Presidents Lincoln and Kennedy shared more than just being leaders during critical times and the misfortune of lives cut short. They shared a power of will to drive the nation, sometimes single-handedly, toward a destination that few but they realized was attainable.

Look at the greatest dressers in history – Philadelphia socialite and diplomat Angier Biddle Duke, Sir Anthony Eden, Fred Astaire, the Duke of Windsor, John F. Kennedy, and Gary Cooper – they all sport the well placed pocket adornment.

Look at what President Kennedy managed to achieve during the Cuban missile crisis. If Bush had been president in 1962, do you think he would have avoided a nuclear war?

Rock stars generally don’t last in the Senate, starting with John Kennedy. Too much work, too slow, too little juice. Getting something accomplished takes a remarkable amount of tedious work. Rock stars who become senators either run for something else or retire on the job. They certainly don’t make a mark.

I was an 18-year-old kid, and I was in the heart of things in Washington. My interest in American politics and, particularly, the Kennedys, began then.

There is one instance that we cite in the report where in one of the conversations a member of organized crime is talking to another member of organized crime and he suggests that Attorney General Kennedy should be murdered.

Robert F. Kennedy Juvenile Justice Collaborative was formed in 2009 to improve federal youth reentry policy through advocacy, coalition building, and giving voice to youth who are directly impacted by the justice system.

I have met every president since President Kennedy. And I think Barack Obama must be listed as one of the best. This young man has been so inspiring – not just to people in America but to people all around the world.

In ‘Profiles in Courage,’ my grandfather, John F. Kennedy, praised leadership that put country above party, elevated principles over petty politics and promoted progress before personal interests.

The heroes of my childhood were Martin Luther King Jr. and John F. Kennedy… but I was inspired by the ideals of our 40th president and became a Republican.

I was sent the script for ‘Silver Linings’ when I was doing a play in D.C. at The Kennedy Center with Cate Blanchett and I was sent the script and asked if I was interested, and I said ‘Oh, boy am I!’

I would’ve loved Jack Kennedy. I would’ve loved to have campaigned for him and supported him. I wish there were more like him today.

For style and for creating a mood of optimism and hope – Kennedy on that count is as effective as any president the country has had in its history.

John F. Kennedy went to bed at 3:30 in the morning on November 9, 1960, uncertain whether he had defeated Richard Nixon for the presidency. He thought he had won, but six states hung in the balance, and after months of exhaustive campaigning, he was too tired to stay awake any longer.

John Kennedy led us on a journey to discover the moon. Obama needs to lead us on a journey to rediscover, rebuild and reinvent our own backyard.

One of the problems with a candidate like Bob Kennedy, and his brother before him, was that people assumed they didn’t need contributions.

I never call myself a Kennedy cousin. In fact, when I signed my contract with Bravo, I made it very clear that they were not allowed in promos to refer to me as a Kennedy cousin. I’m not that person. I don’t feel it.

From the moment he took office in January of 1961, Kennedy had been eager to settle the Cuban problem without overt military action by the United States.

Those 40 or 50 national correspondents who had followed Kennedy since the beginning of his electoral exertions into the November days had become more than a press corps – they had become his friends and, some of them, his most devoted admirers.

The press always compared my family to the Kennedys – so much bad luck.

I remember the day Richard Nixon won in 1968. That was a time that seemed certain to bring about long awaited seismic change in America. But events of tragic proportion took us on a turn. Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr. were suddenly dead.

I picked Harvard because it was in a big city, and a lot of girls’ schools were nearby. And I liked President Kennedy, who went to Harvard.

The events of October 1962 are widely hailed as Kennedy’s finest hour.

I talk to my mom about six times a day, and we constantly email in between that. People say that I’m her twin. I guess it would be the Kennedy genes; my cheekbones are coming out.

The American Dream has run out of gas. The car has stopped. It no longer supplies the world with its images, its dreams, its fantasies. No more. It’s over. It supplies the world with its nightmares now: the Kennedy assassination, Watergate, Vietnam.

We wanted to be certain they didn’t have a bigger deficit, and Kennedy agreed with me.

There was no sense of burden, like, ‘I now must carry on Robert Kennedy’s unfinished work.’ Absolutely not.

Over the past 100 years, there have been three major periods of tax-rate cuts in the U.S.: the Harding-Coolidge cuts of the mid-1920s; the Kennedy cuts of the mid-1960s; and the Reagan cuts of the early 1980s. Each of these periods of tax cuts was remarkably successful as measured by virtually any public policy metric.

I came at age in the ’60s, and initially my hopes and dreams were invested in politics and the movements of the time – the anti-war movement, the civil rights movement. I worked on Bobby Kennedy’s campaign for president as a teenager in California and the night he was killed.

The lesson of the last year is this: foreign policy can’t be managed through the politics of personality, and our President would do well to take note of an observation John F. Kennedy made once he was in office – that all of the world’s problems aren’t his predecessor’s fault.

I’ve done the Kennedy Center many times. I’ve sang for Marian Anderson. I’ve sang for Marion Williams. I’ve sang for Lionel Hampton.

The world fell apart. Sirhan Sirhan shot Bobby Kennedy. Why were people shooting all the Kennedys? Had the country gone mad?

Kennedy was haunted by the Bay of Pigs invasion but carried the country through the Cuban Missile Crisis. He later increased the number of U.S. military advisers to South Vietnam to more than 16,000.

I don’t know why people always think of the Kennedys as a Boston family.

Ted Kennedy was a fighter, and I think the people of Massachusetts want and deserve a fighter.

I’m sure Obama is an atheist; I’m sure Kennedy was an atheist, but I doubt if Pope Frank is.

There is nobody that’s ever going to fill Ted Kennedy’s shoes, and that’s a tall order for somebody in the family to try to live up to.

The one appearance that I made for President Kennedy, he, as I understand, had his choice or was asked to make a list of the people he would like to have perform, and I was fortunate enough to be one of them.

I respect John Kennedy for saying that he had a dream that we’d go to the moon before the end of the decade.

Some people saw Bobby Kennedy as ruthless. I’m sure he did not see himself as ruthless.

Let me start by saying, I’m utterly disgusted with the former members of the Dead Kennedys.

When Caroline Kennedy endorsed Barack Obama in 2008 as her father’s rightful heir, she laid upon him the mantle of Camelot and the enduring mystique of John F. Kennedy, who, according to polls, continues to be America’s most beloved president.

The pilot came back and said he had just heard that Kennedy was shot.

Some Kennedy aides have always insisted that Johnson misread J.F.K.’s plans for Vietnam. They say that Kennedy had begun to rethink the U.S. presence in Indochina and was reluctant to increase it.

‘George’ exploits John Kennedy Jr.’s cult of celebrity at a time when Americans are hungry for icons, not heroes.

The real 1960s began on the afternoon of November 22, 1963. It came to seem that Kennedy’s murder opened some malign trap door in American culture, and the wild bats flapped out.

The Kennedy family might be a lot of things, but for RFK, Jr., ‘warm and fuzzy’ doesn’t exactly come to mind.

We don’t really know who killed Martin Luther King. We don’t really know who killed Bobby Kennedy. We don’t really know who killed John Kennedy. We don’t really know who killed Tupac Shakur.

Joe Kennedy was a massive figure on all kinds of levels.

The decision to go to the moon is now appreciated and associated with President Kennedy’s speech, but somebody else had told him it was a good idea. It turned out to be a good commitment, but it was a unique situation.

On several occasions President Kennedy encouraged me to take a lover, an obvious sign he also had some himself.

Justice Kennedy devoted his career to securing liberty. I am deeply honored to be nominated to fill his seat on the Supreme Court.

So if 1960 had occurred under the old convention system, Kennedy would have had a very hard time getting the Democratic nomination because he would have been rejected by all those people who had worked with him in Washington.

I retired in 2016 as a Lieutenant Commander and immediately went to the Harvard Kennedy School of Government.

I have to say that when I first started singing, I didn’t think it was a very noble profession. I worked for people like Robert Kennedy and I thought: ‘Wow, that’s what it’s about. That’s how you change the world.’ And then I watched that disintegrate in front of my eyes, and it was very discouraging.

Ted Kennedy devoted his lifetime to protecting those most in need, and tens of millions of Americans have been the beneficiaries.

In America, people of a certain age ask, ‘Where were you when Kennedy was shot?’ In my house you were more likely to be asked, ‘Where were you when you first read ‘The Catcher In The Rye?’

I have loved the Department of Justice ever since, as a young boy, I watched Robert Kennedy prove during the Civil Rights Movement how the department can – and must – always be a force for that which is right.

And Hale was devoted to President Kennedy, and there was some talk following the assassination that Hale had warned the President not to go to Dallas, and the connotation was that it would be physically dangerous for him to do so.

I kind of struggled as a 10-year-old to make out what it meant that Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy were killed within two months of each other. I think I was 14 when Watergate happened and a president was impeached. So between my birth and age 14, I just saw a lot of turmoil.

I am just a humble worker. Commander Chavez decided I should be president. To President Obama, we remember that young leader and of the workers of Chicago. So we have a different kind of relation. For him and John Kerry. We talked to Edward Kennedy.

I believed in Bobby Kennedy. Campaigning for him was an attempt to give back something to this country that has given me so much.

I have such respect for… the Kennedy Center Honors. To be an artist in America and to be honored for it is extraordinary. In Europe, they really honor their artists. And you are on a very high level. And here it’s not as revered as it is in Europe or Russia or anywhere in the world.

I ran for Congress in 1996 to help Ted Kennedy pass a comprehensive health insurance reform bill.

Harvard is nerd rehab. You have to check yourself in. Those who seek a school filled with self-proclaimed ‘nerds,’ seek elsewhere. Dropping the H bomb may brand you as an intellectual or a Kennedy. But it will not give you much nerd cred. And that’s a good thing.

President Kennedy said that those who make peaceful revolution impossible make violent revolution inevitable. I would say that the converse is true.

In my lifetime, we’ve gone from Eisenhower to George W. Bush. We’ve gone from John F. Kennedy to Al Gore. If this is evolution, I believe that in twelve years, we’ll be voting for plants.

The Kennedy lifestyle is something that is looked upon favorably by the elites throughout our culture, both political and social.

My mother and Ethel Kennedy became good friends and worked together on a number of causes they had shared with their husbands. They together co-chaired ‘A Time to Remember’ to mobilize a movement for gun control.

In the case of Marilyn and John Kennedy, I think they did affect change.

Television has an awful lot to do with the Kennedy mystique and the fact that he’s frozen in people’s minds at the age of 46, and he was handsome and personable and witty and charming.

The Kennedys tried to avoid using the big U-shaped table, but when they couldn’t, they had several tricks – including keeping the flowers simple – to keep it from appearing overly stiff and formal.

I was the first boy in the Kennedy family to graduate from college.

The myth of the Kennedys – and the hold – was always the hold of the renegade rich, out there on the frontier beyond accountability.

I was born in Islington and grew up in Islington, so Arsenal was all around me, and supporting them was kind of unavoidable. The first season I started going to watch them was when we did the Double in 1971, so my first heroes were Charlie George, Ray Kennedy, and John Radford.

Robert Kennedy was such an inspiring figure. His interest in politics seemed to come not from a desire for power, but from a need to help our society live up to its ideals.

President John F. Kennedy demonstrated the value of presidential credibility at the height of the Cuban missile crisis, when he sent emissaries to America’s allies in October 1962 to secure support for the quarantine of Cuba.

I not only play at the prestigious classical concert halls like Carnegie Hall and Kennedy Center, but also hospitals, churches, prisons, and restricted facilities for leprosy patients, just to mention a few.

I believe Lee Harvey Oswald did not kill John Kennedy. I believe that.

In publishing ‘JFK: Reckless Youth’ almost twenty years ago, I had gotten into trouble myself with the Kennedys. Not because of my portrait of JFK – which was highly laudatory – but because I had described his parents, Joseph P. Kennedy and Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy, in less-than-flattering terms.

I think I’ve drawn from some of the most feminine women, like Jackie Kennedy. I am totally devastated that she’s gone. She had it all.

Movies, TV, sports, come and go, but what you stand for is what people remember. Mandela, Martin Luther King, John Kennedy are people who really stood for something and were willing to die for it. You don’t see a whole lot of that any more.