For while this year it may be a Catholic against whom the finger of suspicion is pointed, in other years it has been, and may someday be again, a Jew--or a Quaker--or a Unitarian--or a Baptist. It was Virginia's harassment of Baptist preachers, for example, that helped lead to Jefferson's statute of religious freedom. Today I may be the victim- -but tomorrow it may be you--until the whole fabric of our harmonious society is ripped at a time of great national peril. Finally, I believe in an America where religious intolerance will someday end--where all men and all churches are treated as equal--where every man has the same right to attend or not attend the church of his choice--where there is no Catholic vote, no anti- Catholic vote, no bloc voting of any kind--and where Catholics, Protestants and Jews, at both the lay and pastoral level, will refrain from those attitudes of disdain and division which have so often marred their works in the past, and promote instead the American ideal of brotherhood. That is the kind of America in which I believe. And it represents the kind of Presidency in which I believe--a great office that must neither be humbled by making it the instrument of any one religious group nor tarnished by arbitrarily withholding its occupancy from the members of any one religious group. I believe in a President whose religious views are his own private affair, neither imposed by him upon the nation or imposed by the nation upon him as a condition to holding that office.. This is the kind of America I believe in--and this is the kind I fought for in the South Pacific, and the kind my brother died for in Europe. No one suggested then that we may have a "divided loyalty, " that we did "not believe in liberty, " or that we belonged to a disloyal group that threatened the "freedoms for which our forefathers died. John F. Kennedy
About This Quote

Abraham Lincoln coined the phrase “no man is good enough to govern another man without that other's consent.” He was also known as a strong supporter of civil rights for all Americans, including African Americans.

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More Quotes By John F. Kennedy
  1. The Chinese use two brush strokes to write the word 'crisis.' One brush stroke stands for danger; the other for opportunity. In a crisis, be aware of the danger--but recognize the opportunity.
  2. The rights of every man are diminished when the rights of one man are threatened.
  3. A man may die, nations may rise and fall, but an idea lives on. Ideas have endurance without death.
  4. Let us never negotiate out of fear. But let us never fear to negotiate.
  5. Do not pray for easy lives. Pray to be stronger men.
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