My fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.

Tonight - to you, the great silent majority of my fellow Americans - I ask for your support.

Ask not what you can do for your country. Ask what's for lunch.

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

We are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant facts, foreign ideas, alien philosophies, and competitive values. For a nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people.

If we cannot end now our differences, at least we can help make the world safe for diversity. For, in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children's future. And we are all mortal.

[Commencement Address at American University, June 10 1963]