Rare Autograph and Manuscript Auction
This lot is closed for bidding. Bidding ended on 11/19/2015
President of the U.S. Autograph manuscript unsigned. 2 pp, front and back on a 6 ¼ x 9 ½ “ sheet’ of letterhead of the United States Senate Labor and Public Welfare Government Operations Committee. This is the second sheet of Kennedy’s notes for a speech he delivered when a Senator. He made these notes from A. Lawrence Lowell’s “Conflict of Principles”, which was published in 1932. Evelyn Lincoln, JFK’s secretary, translated this scrawl into legibility for its owner, who sold it to the consignor. It says, Lowell/Lawrence
Holmes said to him that the art of life consists in making correct guesses on insufficient information – insufficient because we can never know all the elements that enter into a right decision.
1st Compromise means many things besides deserting principle. It often signifies getting as much as can be attained at the time, rather than lose by striving for the impossible.
2nd The term may imply no departure whatever from the principle at stake or from the end sought, but a selection of the means that will be most likely to attain the result desired and thus carry into effect the principle behind it.
“The process is often painful, and involves either a conflict or a compromise – that is an adjustment of conflicting principles & neither of them strictly true, to the nearest feasible approximation to the proportionate amount of truth each contains under actual conditions.” One can only wish that today’s politicians could accept and adopt the view of compromise that Kennedy obviously espoused. 147 words in JFK’s handwriting provide a historic peek into his thinking about governing.
John F. Kennedy Rare Autograph Manuscript
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