Address at Rice University, Houston, Texas, 12 September 1962

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE, SEPTEMBER 12, 196 2 OFFICE OF THE WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY (Houston, Texas) THE WHITE HOUSE REMARKS OF THE PRESIDENT RICE UNIVERSITY STADIUM HOUSTON, TEXAS President Pitzer, Mr. Vice President, Governor Congressman Thomas, Senator Wiley, and Congressman Miller, Mr. Webb, Mr. Bell, scientists, distinguished guests and ladies and gentlemen: I appreciate your president having made me an. honorary visiting professor, and I will assure you that my first lecture will be very brief. I am delighted to be here and I ami particularly delighted to be here on this occasion. We meet at a college noted for knowledge, in a city noted for progress, in a State noted for strength, and we stand in need of all three, for we meet in an hour of change and challenge, in a decade of hope and fear, in an age of both knowledge and ignorance. The greater our knowledge increases, the greater our ignorance unfolds. Despite the striking fact that most of the scien- tists that the world has ever known are alive and working today, despite the fact that this Nation's own scientific manpower is doubling every 12 years in a rate of growth more than three times that of our population as a whole, despite that, the vast stretches of the unknown and the unanswered and theunfinished still far outstrip our collective comprehension. No man can fully grasp how far and how fast we have come, but condense, ifyou will, the 50,000 years of man's recorded history in a time span of but a half-century. Stated in these terms, we know very little about the first 40 years, except at the end of them advanced man had learned to use the skins of animals to cover them. Then about 10 years ago under this standard man emerged from his caves to construct other kinds of shelter. Only five years ago man learned to write and use a cart with wheels. Christian- ity began lass than two years ago. Theprinting press came this year, and then less than two months ago, during this whole 50-year span of human history, the steam engine pro- vided a new source of power. Newton explored the meaning of gravity. Last month electric lights and telephones and automobiles and air- planes became available. Only last week did we develop penicillin and television and nuclear power, and now if America's new spacecraft succeeds in reaching Venus, we will have literally reached the stars before midnight tonight. This is a breathtaking pace. and such a pace cannot help but create new ills as it dispels old, new ignorance, new problems, new dangers. Surely the opening vistas of space promise high costs and hardships, as well as high reward. MORE