Some folks can sum up a great thought in a few well chosen words. And sometimes we like to ascribe the ability to do so to folks we really admire. And in doing so we sometimes attribute great thoughts to the wrong great person.

Today we will just have a simple matching quiz to warm the brain up for a day of raking all them leaves.

1) “The most important family policy, urban policy, labor policy, minority policy, and foreign policy America can have is an expanding entrepreneurial economy of high-wage, high-skilled jobs.”

2) “War may sometimes be a necessary evil. But no matter how necessary, it is always an evil, never a good. We will not learn how to live together in peace by killing each other’s children.”

3) “If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich.”

4) “We stand today on the edge of a new frontier – the frontier of the – a frontier of unknown opportunities and perils – a frontier of unfulfilled hopes and threats.

5) “A conservative is a man with two perfectly good legs who, however, has never learned how to walk forward.”

6) “If one morning I walked on top of the water across the Potomac River, the headline that afternoon would read: “President Can’t Swim.”

7) “I ask you to judge me by the enemies I have made.”

8) “Never give in and never give up.”

9) “The very word ‘secrecy’ is repugnant in a free and open society; and we are as a people inherently and historically opposed to secret societies, to secret oaths, and to secret proceedings.”

10) “When times are tough, constant conflict may be good politics but in the real world, cooperation works better.”

11) “I never did give anybody hell. I just told the truth and they thought it was hell.”

12) “The vote is the most powerful instrument ever devised by man for breaking down injustice and destroying the terrible walls which imprison men because they are different from other men.”

13) “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.”

14) “A nation that destroys its soils destroys itself. Forests are the lungs of our land, purifying the air and giving fresh strength to our people.”

15) “If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.”

16) “Do you realize the responsibility I carry? I’m the only person standing between Richard Nixon and the White House.”

17) “There are those who say to you – we are rushing this issue of civil rights. I say we are 172 years late.”

18) “You want a friend in Washington? Get a dog.”

19) “Repetition does not transform a lie into a truth.”

20) “Let us never negotiate out of fear. But let us never fear to negotiate.”

And the choices for answers are:

a) FDR

b) HST

c) JFK

d) LBJ

e) HHH

f) JEC

g) WJC

So many great quotes from this group. They all had a compassion for their fellow man in common. Plus they were all great Democratic leaders and all but one a president. Hard to limit the quotes, there are so many good ones. But here are the answers:

1) g) WJC

2) f) JEC

3) c) JFK

4) c) JFK

5) a) FDR

6) d) LBJ

7) a) FDR

8) e) HHH

9) c) JFK (you hear that ALEC?)

10) g) WJC

11) b) HST

12) d) LBJ

13) d) LBJ

14) a) FDR

15) b) HST

16) c) JFK

17) e) HHH

18) b) HST

19) a) FDR

20) c) JFK

Boy that Kennedy, what a quote machine.