US Presidency
1962

For the great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie, deliberate, contrived, and dishonest, but the myth, persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic. Too often we hold fast to the cliches of our forebears. We subject all facts to a prefabricated set of interpretations. We enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought. Mythology distracts us everywhere, in government as in business, in politics as in economics, in foreign affairs as in domestic affairs. But today I want to particularly consider the myth and reality in our national economy. In recent months many have come to feel, as I do, that the dialog between the parties, between business and government, between the government and the public, is clogged by illusion and platitude and fails to reflect the true realities of contemporary American society. I speak of these matters here at Yale because of the self evident truth that a great university is always enlisted against the spread of illusion and on the side of reality.