Ask Not What Your Country Can Do For You...

But what you can do for your country." ~JFK

Tonight, since I am currently snowed in, I decided to look through this book I have that contains the Greatest American Speeches.  It has soo many great speeches in it, hence the title right?  With Martin Luther King Jr. day and the passing of Sargent Shriver this week I thought some speeches were worth another read. 
I absolutely love JFK's inaugural speech and how fitting it still is today and how motivating it can be for those of us embarking on this peace corps journey.  I wanted to share some of my favorite lines from the speech.  One in particular that stand out the most and represents to me the spirit behind the idea and formation of the peace corps and it's volunteers, is this:

"To those people in the huts and villages of half the globe struggling to break the bonds of mass misery, we pledge our best efforts to help them help themselves, for whatever period is required-not because the communists may be doing it, not because we seek their votes, but because it is right.
If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich." 

"In your hands..will rest the final success or failure of our course.  Now the trumpet summons us again-not as a call to bear arms, though arms we need; not as a call to battle, though embattled we are-but a call to bear the burden of a long twilight struggle, year in and year out, rejoicing in hope, patient in tribulation, a struggle against the common enemies of man: tyranny, poverty, disease, and war itself."
"The energy, the faith, the devotion which we bring to this endeavor will light our country and all who serve it.  And the glow from that fire can truly light the world."

To me, a great speech is one that can stand the test of time and this one has done so.  Fifty years later we can still be inspired and motivated by it, as well as see how applicable it still is to today's world. 
To JFK, Sargent Shriver, and all those that have served and made peace corps possible, I thank you and can only hope that the bold and courageous continue to step forward.