"Change is the law of life"

I came across a great quote by President John F. Kennedy from a speech that he delivered in Frankfurt, Germany on June 25, 1963.  The context of the speech is important.  During that same trip, President Kennedy would visit the Berlin Wall on June 26th and famously announce, "Ich bin ein Berliner."  But it was his address the day before that to the Assembly Hall at the Paulskirche (St. Paul's Church), site of the first free German Parliament in 1848, where he outlined a vision of transatlantic partnership that continues to define relations between the United States and Germany to this day.  

President Kennedy was both celebrating both American and German liberty, but he was also warning that neither the U.S. nor Germany could rest on the laurels of the past.  Only with a continued commitment to the future could liberty be preserved.  He said, "But Goethe tells us in his greatest poem that Faust lost the liberty of his soul when he said to the passing moment: Stay, thou art so fair. And our liberty, too, is endangered if we pause for the passing moment, if we rest on our achievements, if we resist the pace of progress."

The quote that I found comes right after the passage above.  President Kennedy said, "Time and the world do not stand still. Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or the present are certain to miss the future."  It's an incredible quote on a theme that I've written about a lot in a number of previous posts.  While the speech refers to political events of a time long ago, the words and themes in President Kennedy's speech are just as relevant today.  It's well worth a read, if you want to go deeper and beyond his great quote on change!