Respectfully Quoted: A Dictionary of Quotations. 1989.
NUMBER:
1397
AUTHOR:
John Fitzgerald Kennedy (1917–63)
QUOTATION:
“Don’t teach my boy poetry,” an English mother recently wrote the Provost of Harrow. “Don’t teach my boy poetry; he is going to stand for Parliament.” Well, perhaps she was right—but if more politicians knew poetry, and more poets knew politics, I am convinced the world would be a little better place to live on this Commencement Day of 1956.
ATTRIBUTION:
Senator JOHN F. KENNEDY, address to the annual meeting of the Harvard Alumni Association, Cambridge, Massachusetts, June 14, 1956.—Text, pp. 11–12.
