Thursday, June 14, 1956
Pilgrimage
JFK gave the commencement address at Harvard University, referring to his trip to Cambridge as a pilgrimage to a second home. True to his practice of delivering short, concise speeches sprinkled with historical allusions, he kept his remarks to ten paragraphs. He used anecdotes abouts about Bismarck and Queen Victoria to plead for a closer intellectual and professional camaraderie between historians and politicians
It seems to me that the time has come for intellectuals and politicians alike to put aside those horrible weapons of modern internecine warfare, the barbed thrust, the acid pen, and, most sinister of all, the rhetorical blast. Let us not emphasize all on which we differ but all we have in common. Let us consider not what we fear separately but what we share together.
[128, p. 137]