Remarks at the Dedication of the John F. Kennedy Cultural Center at Mitchel Field, New York.

Reverend Clergy, Mr. Nickerson, distinguished guests on the platform, ladies and gentlemen:

The building that you will build and the hopes that it represents are truly a fitting memorial to John F. Kennedy.

He once said, "I look forward to an America which will steadily raise the standards of artistic accomplishments and which will steadily enlarge cultural opportunities for all of our citizens."

Today, you good people of Nassau County, without regard to party or race or religion or national ancestry come here to contribute your bit to help bring that vision closer to fulfillment.

Here, in this future center men and women will come to enjoy and to learn from the noblest creations of the mind and the spirit. They will meet here with their neighbors in community activities and, as we heard in our invocation, I hope they will meet here to teach and to learn, to end fear and ignorance, to end all bigotry and prejudice, and to put all hate to flight.

John F. Kennedy was the victim of the hate that was a part of our country. It is a disease that occupies the minds of the few but brings danger to the many.

I thought as I was sitting at a lunch with some of your most distinguished citizens if, oh, some way, somehow, sometime we could just appeal to the manhood and womanhood that is in all of us and the Americanism that beats in all of our breasts to banish all hatred from our midst--what a wonderful world this would be!

If it didn't sound critical, I would point out that few people enjoy sitting on the sidelines and talking about their prejudices and wailing about their fears, indulging their favorite pastime of discrimination, and developing in themselves, in their neighbors, and in their children hates of their fellow man. All of those things our forefathers came across the ocean to forget and to leave behind and to get away from.

So, in this election year I hope that we can banish those who would frighten us and those who would preach hate and those who would be vituperative and swing their poisonous mud that infects the diseased minds that are receptive to it.

This center can set an example. It can accentuate the positive instead of the negative.

If we had more centers like this, if we had done our job a little better and we had feared a little less, and our hatred had been minimized and our bigotry had been driven underground, John Fitzgerald Kennedy could be here with us today as our 35th President.

He gave his life for his country. He need not have given it except for those who hate and those who fear and those who frighten easily and those who feel insecure.

I think if I could ask our Heavenly father who created us all "in Thine own image" for one wish today, I think I would ask Him to ask the people of this continent to not ask a man how he spells his name or what country his ancestors came from, or what church he attends, or what political party he belongs to but ask him, instead if he is sure, after a little introspection, that he could practice the Golden Rule, if he is sure that he could "love thy neighbor as thyself," if he is sure that he could love instead of hate, and if he could stand up with courage instead of bend over with fear.

That is the way to build a great society. That is the kind of people we want to make up our community and our country.

To President Kennedy the world of creation and the world of thought were not removed from the mainstream of American life. They were at the very core of civilization, the power and achievements of man's art stripped bare the truths of human life.

They all speak a universal language, building understanding between man and man, building understanding between nation and nation. And those achievements often endure long after the names of the warriors and the statesmen have grown dim.

I have served in the Congress 32 years and I have seen 3,000 different men and women come and go. Some years the Republicans dominated the Congress and some years the Democrats. But I can truthfully say in all of those 3,000 men and women with whom I have served, I couldn't point to one single one today of either party that I thought was elected on a platform of doing what was wrong. They all came there to do their dead level best by their country and by their constituency. They did what they thought was right but a good many of them were frightened and some were fearful and some were hesitant, and some were shy.

One of the hopes for our future greatness lies in centers like this, bringing contact with the riches of our culture to men and women of every part of the country, helping to drive ignorance and bigotry and intolerance and discrimination into the cellars and caves where it belongs and where it can never sprout again.

I think the one thing that has impressed me more since I have become President than any one thing is to realize that we are not the only nation in the world that wants peace--that we are not the only nation in the world that wants to protect human beings.

Nations, like the men I talked about who served in the Congress, all think they are doing what is best for their people, but this problem of human understanding, this problem of getting along with your fellow human being in a different part of the world, reared in a different environment, speaking a different language, brought up under different circumstances, educated in different schools, taught different principles--it is a pretty difficult assignment. It requires forbearance and it requires patience, it requires knowledge and understanding, the kind of which this center will produce, because if we are unable to produce men and women who have that knowledge and understanding, our civilization and our way of life will not long endure.

So, it gives me a great pleasure to come to this center, come to where this building will be built as a tribute to the greatness of America and consider that those glories that we cherish so much were purchased by a valiant leader who never swerved from his duty--John F. Kennedy.

Pericles said: "If Athens shall appear great to you, consider then that her glories were purchased by valiant men, and by men who learned their duty."

I stood by John Kennedy's side many years ago in the Senate and I stood by his side through the '60 campaign and 3 years thereafter. He learned his duty and he did it as he saw it. So, I know of nothing that would • give him more genuine pleasure than to realize that here on this lovely spot, in this most prosperous county with this enlightened citizenship, that we would today come to build a house that would forever be a part of building a citizenship that would banish fear and would drive hate from the earth and would stop our name-calling, and would end our mud-slinging, and permit us to "love thy neighbor as thyself."

I am honored that you asked me to come. I hope I can come back to this center when your work shall have been completed. I hope in the meantime that we can have a moratorium notwithstanding the challenges that come in all corners of the world, notwithstanding the differences in our political convictions here at home--I hope that we can settle these matters on a high plane of principle instead of the low trough of vengeance and vindictiveness and hate, because hate destroys man--and hope builds him.

This Nation is the envy of the entire world but we still have a job to do. And you people who come here today are doing your part of that job. So as my fellow Americans, I not only congratulate you for the foresight you have and the contribution you are making but I thank you from the bottom of my heart for the understanding that is in your heart.

So when you go home tonight, before you go to bed, say your prayers and ask yourself this question: What have I done to banish fear and hate from myself today? Ask yourself if you can't find something good to say about your neighbor instead of something bad to say about him. Ask yourself if somehow, some way, you can't substitute just a little love for so much hate. And if you do that and if we all do it tonight and every night, when we meet here when this building shall have been completed, we will all then be living in a better world than we are today.