"My father always told me that all businessmen were sons of bitches, but I never believed it till now"
About this Quote
A president admitting his dad might have been right is classic Kennedy: patrician charm with a knife tucked behind the grin. The line lands because it’s not a stump-speech morality play; it’s a private-room verdict, blunt enough to feel overheard. “Sons of bitches” is doing double duty. It’s an insult, sure, but also a class marker - a Brahmin Catholic scion borrowing barroom language to signal he’s furious, not posturing. The profanity makes the moment legible: something in the machinery of power has just revealed itself as ugly.
The subtext is less “commerce is evil” than “I have discovered the limits of gentlemanly deal-making.” Kennedy grew up around businessmen, donors, and operators; he understood the transactional glue of American politics. So when he says he “never believed it till now,” he’s confessing to a lost innocence he never fully had. It’s the sound of a liberal Cold War technocrat watching corporate or financial interests treat the public good as another bargaining chip - and realizing that persuasion, charm, and backchanneling don’t always beat the profit motive.
Context matters because JFK’s presidency lived at the intersection of high idealism and hard-nosed negotiation: steel price battles, defense contracting, backroom alliances, Wall Street confidence games. The line frames business not as an engine of prosperity but as a rival center of sovereignty. Coming from the president, it’s also a warning: the state may wear the crown, but capital thinks it owns the room.
The subtext is less “commerce is evil” than “I have discovered the limits of gentlemanly deal-making.” Kennedy grew up around businessmen, donors, and operators; he understood the transactional glue of American politics. So when he says he “never believed it till now,” he’s confessing to a lost innocence he never fully had. It’s the sound of a liberal Cold War technocrat watching corporate or financial interests treat the public good as another bargaining chip - and realizing that persuasion, charm, and backchanneling don’t always beat the profit motive.
Context matters because JFK’s presidency lived at the intersection of high idealism and hard-nosed negotiation: steel price battles, defense contracting, backroom alliances, Wall Street confidence games. The line frames business not as an engine of prosperity but as a rival center of sovereignty. Coming from the president, it’s also a warning: the state may wear the crown, but capital thinks it owns the room.
Quote Details
| Topic | Sarcastic |
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