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 scientists that the world has ever
known are alive and working today, the vast stretches of the unknown and the
unanswered and the unfinished still far outstrip our collective comprehension.
There is no strife, no prejudice, no national conflict in outer space as yet.
Its hazards are hostile to us all. Its conquest deservers the best of all mankind,
and its opportunity for peaceful cooperation may never come again.
But why, some say, the moon? Why choose this as our goal?
And they may well ask why climb the highest mountain?
Why, 35 years ago, fly the Atlantic?
We choose to go to the moon.
We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because
they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize
and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one
that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we
intend to win.