Inaugural Address: "Pay Any Price, Bear Any Burden"
In his Inaugural Address on January 20, 1961, President Kennedy presented the American public with a blueprint upon which the future foreign policy initiatives of his administration would later follow and come to represent. In this Address, Kennedy warned “Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty.”1 He also called upon the public to assist in “a struggle against the common enemies of man: tyranny, poverty, disease, and war itself.”1 It is in this address that one begins to see the Cold War, us-versus-them mentality that came to dominate the Kennedy administration.
Read more about this topic: Kennedy Doctrine
Famous quotes containing the words pay, bear and/or burden:
“How like a prodigal doth nature seem,
When thou, for all thy gold, so common art!
Thou teachest me to deem
More sacredly of every human heart,
Since each reflects in joy its scanty gleam
Of Heaven, and could some wondrous secret show,
Did we but pay the love we owe,
And with a child’s undoubting wisdom look
On all these living pages of God’s book.”
—James Russell Lowell (1819–1891)
“I could never bear to be buried with people to whom I had not been introduced.”
—Norman Parkinson (1913–1990)
“Then she took up her burden of life again
Saying only, “It might have been.””
—John Greenleaf Whittier (1807–1892)