Lloyd Bentsen Quotes

I'm a product of the Kennedy era. Kennedy's Inaugural plus the accident of Dean Rusk brought me into the government. Those were my values.

I came to political consciousness with John F. Kennedy's magnificent 1961 Inaugural Address. It seemed the start of something fresh and exciting, and it was.

President Kennedy was the greatest man I ever met, and the best friend I ever had.

I've learned to appreciate the thinking of John Kennedy.

The John F. Kennedy presidency, with its glittering court of Camelot, cemented the impression that it was the Democrats who represented the thinking men and women of America.

I was very political when JFK ran.

When President Kennedy took office, I was in the midst of my education.

When I was a kid, Eisenhower had been President forever, and all of a sudden, everything in the world was all about Jack Kennedy. I was 12, interested in politics; my father was from Massachusetts, had an accent like Kennedy.

JFK is a role I've always dreamt of playing.

[Describing John F. Kennedy:] He is sort of an Indian snake charmer.

I guess the Kennedys were just too busy having an affair with Marilyn to worry about Vietnam.

When I met Jack Kennedy, he was a serious young man with a dream. He was not a womanizer, not as I understood the term.

Certainly I think the election of John Kennedy and all he stood for was one that really was an inspiration.

I love J. F. K. My mother had been a worker on his campaign and adored him.

Kennedy is remembered as a success mainly because of what came after: Johnson and Vietnam. Nixon and Watergate.

John F. Kennedy, the man I had thought would define the political ideal for the rest of my days, was suddenly gone in the senseless violence of a single moment.

[John F.] Kennedy was a mask on the face of America while Lyndon Johnson was America.

Since Kennedy's death, the nation has not seen, in any of his successors, his cosmopolitan intellectualism or the oratorical eloquence with which he sought to lead the nation by the power of his words.

I didn't know Jack Kennedy that well, but Bobby was a hero to me.

I met Jack Kennedy in November, 1946... We went out on a double date and it turned out to be a fair evening for me. I seduced a girl who would have been bored by a diamond as big as the Ritz.

[John F. Kennedy] was Arthur, the guy in the middle of the room with all the swords pointed at him. ... He wanted control of the situation.

John F. Kennedy loved America. He was proud to be an American. And you'd call that politician JFK. That's who he was. He was not in any way a liberal as you know liberals today.

The argument that John F. Kennedy was a closet peacenik, ready to give up on what the Vietnamese call the 'American War' upon re-election, received its most farcical treatment in Oliver Stone's 'JFK.'

I would've loved Jack Kennedy. I would've loved to have campaigned for him and supported him. I wish there were more like him today.

Kennedy was haunted by the Bay of Pigs invasion but carried the country through the Cuban Missile Crisis. He later increased the number of U.S. military advisers to South Vietnam to more than 16,000.