John F. Kennedy Quotes: Remembering JFK 54 Years After Assassination

John Fitzgerald Kennedy, one of America’s beloved presidents, was assassinated on Nov. 22, 1963, in Dallas. Wednesday marks the 54th year after Kennedy was killed by Lee Harvey Oswald. He was buried at the Arlington National Cemetery, Virginia.

Kennedy was 43-years-old when he became the president, the youngest ever elected. He was the only president to have been awarded the Purple Heart for his service in the Pacific during World War II.

Here are some of the most memorable quotes from the former president, courtesy Goodreads and Brainy Quotes.

1. "Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country."

2. "We stand today on the edge of a New Frontier — the frontier of the 1960s, the frontier of unknown opportunities and perils, the frontier of unfilled hopes and unfilled threats. ... Beyond that frontier are uncharted areas of science and space, unsolved problems of peace and war, unconquered problems of ignorance and prejudice, unanswered questions of poverty and surplus."

3. "As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words, but to live by them."

4. "This country cannot afford to be materially rich and spiritually poor."

5. "Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or present are certain to miss the future."

6. "Children are the world’s most valuable resource and its best hope for the future."

7. "War will exist until that distant day when the conscientious objector enjoys the same reputation and prestige that the warrior does today."

8. "The goal of education is the advancement of knowledge and the dissemination of truth."

9. "The rights of every man are diminished when the rights of one man are threatened."

10. "A nation reveals itself not only by the men it produces but also by the men it honors, the men it remembers."

11. "Forgive your enemies, but never forget their names."

12. "The life of the arts, far from being an interruption, a distraction, in the life of a nation, is very close to the center of a nation’s purpose ... and is a test of the quality of a nation’s civilization."

13. "Mankind must put an end to war before war puts an end to mankind."

14. "If we cannot end now our differences, at least we can help make the world safe for diversity."

15. "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."

16. "A man may die, nations may rise and fall, but an idea lives on."

17. "There are three things which are real; God, human folly and laughter. The first two are beyond our comprehension so we must do what we can with the third."

18. "We celebrate the past to awaken the future."

19. "Communism has never come to power in a country that was not disrupted by war or corruption, or both."

20. "Peace is a daily, a weekly, a monthly process, gradually changing opinions, slowly eroding old barriers, quietly building new structures."