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Frank
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What is origin of (before its use by U.S. Pres. John F. Kennedy): Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country?

What is origin of (before its use by U.S. Pres. John F. Kennedy):  Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country?

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keebler1
keebler1 Answered:

President Kennedy often came up with his most memorable quotes on his own.  Many, like this one, were inspired by other famous quotes but the end result was pure Kennedy:

The most stirring line of JFK's inaugural address, "Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country," echoed similar exhortations made by many others, including Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. and President Warren G. Harding, who told the 1916 Republican convention, "We must have a citizenship less concerned about what the government can do for it and more anxious about what it can do for the nation."

The inspiration for Kennedy's famous observation, "For of those to whom much is given, much is required" can be found in Luke 12:48: "For unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall be much required."

It has been reported at various places on the internet that in JFK's Inaugural address, the famous line "Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country", was inspired by, or even a direct quotation of the famous and much esteemed writer and poet Khalil Gibran. Gibran in 1925 wrote in Arabic a line that has been translated as:

Are you a politician asking what your country can do for you or a zealous one asking what you can do for your country? If you are the first, then you are a parasite; if the second, then you are an oasis in a desert.

However, this translation of Gibran is one that occurred over a decade after Kennedy's 1961 speech, appearing in A Third Treasury of Kahlil Gibran (1975).

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