Light The Candle

But I think the American people expect more from us than cries of indignation and attack.  The times are too grave, the challenge too urgent, and the stakes too high -- to permit the customary passions of political debate.  We are not here to curse the darkness, but to light the candle that can guide us through that darkness to a safe and sane future.  As Winston Churchill said on taking office some twenty years ago: if we open a quarrel between the present and the past, we shall be in danger of losing the future.  Today our concern must be with that future.  For the world is changing.  The old era is ending.  The old ways will not do.

-- John Fitzgerald Kennedy (1917 - 1963), 35th President of the United States, Presidential Nomination Acceptance Speech to the Democratic National Convention at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum (15 July 1960)