Address at Rice University, Houston, Texas, 12 September 1962
This folder contains materials collected by the office of President John F. Kennedy's secretary, Evelyn Lincoln, concerning President Kennedy's remarks at the Rice University Stadium in Houston, Texas concerning the nation's efforts in space exploration. In his speech the Pres...
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OCR Page 1 of 42FOR 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 am 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
.r
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.
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