JFK had to act before his fragile body betrayed him.

Manners matter as this author memorably illustrates. Eleanor Roosevelt stubbornly kept her clout behind Adlai Stevenson was an almost visceral resistance to John F. Kennedy's charms as a newcomer to power. The sudden death of Eleanor's granddaughter shortly before JFK was to meet with her suggested that rapprochement was impossible. Kennedy's genuine gentle manners toward the grieving former first lady won her over and may have shifted the balance in an extremely close election.

Reporters heard words but not poetry, saw old politicians but not new heroes.

If it was bliss to be alive, to hunt was rapture.

Eisenhower on LBJ: "He hadn't got the depth of mind nor the breath vision to carry great responsibility.

John F. Kennedy "is, in reality, a deeply serious man, reflective in his mental habits, historically minded, and given to seeing men and nations and events in the sobering context that history provides.

As a human being, he is often humorous, easily bored by total routine but open to all fresh experiences, careless of the superficialities of life, warmly loyal to his friends, and oddly detached about himself. His most curious trait, in fact, is his way of discussing his most vital affairs with the dry humor and cool analytical remoteness that most people reserve for the affairs of others. – Joseph Alsop