Ask not what your country can do for you — ask what you can do for your country.

John F. Kennedy delivered this line in his inaugural address on January 20, 1961, on the steps of the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., as he became the youngest elected president. The speech came at a tense moment in the Cold War, with anxieties about nuclear confrontation, decolonization, and ideological competition with the Soviet Union. Kennedy’s address repeatedly emphasized shared sacrifice, civic duty, and national purpose, and the “Ask not…” sentence served as a climactic appeal to Americans to contribute actively to public life rather than approach government as a dispenser of private benefits.

The quotation is a compact call for civic responsibility: it reverses the usual consumer-like question citizens might ask of the state and replaces it with an ethic of service. Its rhetorical power comes from antimetabole (reversing key terms) and parallel structure, turning a moral argument into a memorable cadence. Kennedy frames citizenship as participation and sacrifice—an invitation to volunteerism, military service, and engagement in democratic institutions—while also implying that national strength depends on collective contributions. More broadly, it expresses a communitarian vision of politics in which rights are paired with obligations and public purpose outweighs private entitlement.

And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country.

My fellow citizens of the world: ask not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man.