Our growing softness, our increasing lack of physical fitness, is a menace to our security.
Interpretation
Physical fitness is essential for security and well-being in society.
In this quote, John F. Kennedy warns that a decline in physical fitness can have negative implications for the security of a nation. He implies that as people become less fit and more reliant on convenience, their ability to respond to challenges weakens, making both individuals and society more vulnerable.
In practice
A public health campaign could use this quote to emphasize the importance of physical fitness in maintaining national security.
The great battleground for the defense and expansion of freedom today is the whole southern half of the globe... the lands of the rising peoples. Their revolution is the greatest in human history. They seek an end to injustice, tyranny and exploitation. More than an end, they seek a beginning.
I had always enjoyed the title of Commander-in-Chief until I was informed ... that the only forces that cannot be transferred from Washington without my express permission are the members of the Marine Corps Band. Those are the only forces I have. I want it announced that we propose to hold the White House against all odds at least for some time to come.
I am talking about genuine peace, the kind of peace that makes life on earth worth living, the kind that enables men and nations to grow and to hope and to build a better life for their children - not merely peace for Americans but peace for all men and women - not merely peace in our time but peace for all time.
I just received the following wire from my generous Daddy; Dear Jack, Don't buy a single vote more than is necessary. I'll be damned if I'm going to pay for a landslide.
Tolerance implies no lack of commitment to one's own beliefs. Rather it condemns the oppression or persecution of others.
Mankind must put an end to war before war puts an end to mankind.
You should not actually stay in bed for very long awake, because your brain is this remarkably associative device, and it quickly learns that the bed is about being awake. So you should go to another room - a room that's dim. Just read a book - no screens, no phones - and, only when you're sleepy, return to the bed.
I think people who become compulsive about fitness or eating right, a lot of the time it's out of fear that they're going to lose control or that they're not good enough, so I think anything done out of fear or motivated by fear is often unhealthy.
When we think of the major threats to our national security, the first to come to mind are nuclear proliferation, rogue states and global terrorism. But another kind of threat lurks beyond our shores, one from nature, not humans - an avian flu pandemic.
'Healing,' Papa would tell me, 'is not a science, but the intuitive art of wooing nature.'
Let us give publicity to HIV/AIDS and not hide it, because [that is] the only way to make it appear like a normal illness
You've got to exercise. Your health account, your bank account, they're the same thing. The more you put in, the more you can take out.
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