John F. Kennedy Quotes

No politician can sit on a hot issue if you make it hot enough.

I really feel that political will is born out of popular will.

58% of the American public are with us. We're preaching to the choir, but the choir's not singing, if all of the 58% started singing, this war would end.

You can be president of the United States and have the best, most bipartisan-seeming idea in the world. But if it doesn't have a constituency, you might as well be town clerk of Toad Suck, Arkansas.

Don't count on Congress. Laws come into being because people on the ground demand it.

You can't do progressive government from the inside. You have to rally those outsiders and make them a force.

Look, all this is about is utilizing the rules of the Senate, using a majority of the senators, to make sure that we get health reform done. We cannot wait another day.

If you can’t move the public, you can’t move the Congress.

It's up to us [pro-choice activists] to mobilize public opinion in such a way that these politicians know their jobs are at stake.

Politicians move when the public requires them to move.

Usually, boycotts sometimes don't really accomplish anything besides the fact that you show you that don't agree with what's going on.

We think there's nothing like sunlight to mobilize and energize citizens to demand change of their elected officials.

Any government, of whatever composition, needs to mobilise opinion way beyond its own ranks in order to do the difficult things that it does.

You might have noticed Harry Reid is a little upset with Americans for Prosperity. Let me tell you, when the Democrat leader is complaining about you on the Senate floor, you know you are doing something right.

I have always believed that on important issues, the leaders must lead. Where the leaders fail to lead, and people are really concerned about it, the people will take the lead and make the leaders follow.

Activists are generally doers - rather than watching television and thinking about the world they will put there energies into doing something 'active' to change the (political) situation.

I learned in my four decades in Washington that one person can make a difference.

At the end of the day, the government, local government all bow to public pressure.

We need to put strong Democratic pressure on President Obama in the name of poor and working people.

We decided to act carefully, concealing our aims, because if the movement were frankly revolutionary it would not be supported by the general mass of people... Since the natives are indifferent to the word liberty it is necessary to make them believe that the rising is undertaken simply to favor King Ferdinand.

Campaigns have consequences.

You cannot make elected officials … do what they will not do.

Public opinion is always in advance of the law.

Wake up America.

We are the only country that can provide world leadership, but we have to have the support of the American people to do it.