"When power leads man toward arrogance, poetry reminds him of his limitations. When power narrows the area of man's concern, poetry reminds him of the richness and diversity of existence. When power corrupts, poetry cleanses"
About this Quote
Kennedy frames poetry as a civic counterweight, not a decorative art. The line lands because it treats power as a predictable force with predictable side effects: arrogance, tunnel vision, corruption. Each clause is a diagnostic, delivered with the steady cadence of someone who knows the temptations of office from the inside. The repetition of "When power..". turns authority into a kind of weather system - impersonal, recurring, almost inevitable. That rhetorical choice quietly absolves individuals just enough to make the warning harder to dismiss: if corruption is a condition of power itself, then the antidote can’t be better manners; it has to be a different way of seeing.
The subtext is Kennedy’s own anxiety about the moral hazards of Cold War leadership. In an era when policy decisions could incinerate cities, "the area of man's concern" was constantly being narrowed by strategy, ideology, and the brutal arithmetic of deterrence. Poetry, in this formulation, expands the frame: it restores the human texture that bureaucracies and war rooms flatten. "Richness and diversity" isn’t an abstract celebration of culture so much as a rebuke to any worldview that reduces people to units, enemies, or collateral.
Most striking is the final turn: "When power corrupts, poetry cleanses". That’s not a claim that art makes leaders virtuous; it’s a claim that art re-sensitizes them. Cleansing here means removing the film that power lays over empathy and doubt. Kennedy is selling public support for the arts as democratic self-defense: a society needs voices that can puncture the self-importance of its rulers and reintroduce moral complexity where power prefers certainty.
The subtext is Kennedy’s own anxiety about the moral hazards of Cold War leadership. In an era when policy decisions could incinerate cities, "the area of man's concern" was constantly being narrowed by strategy, ideology, and the brutal arithmetic of deterrence. Poetry, in this formulation, expands the frame: it restores the human texture that bureaucracies and war rooms flatten. "Richness and diversity" isn’t an abstract celebration of culture so much as a rebuke to any worldview that reduces people to units, enemies, or collateral.
Most striking is the final turn: "When power corrupts, poetry cleanses". That’s not a claim that art makes leaders virtuous; it’s a claim that art re-sensitizes them. Cleansing here means removing the film that power lays over empathy and doubt. Kennedy is selling public support for the arts as democratic self-defense: a society needs voices that can puncture the self-importance of its rulers and reintroduce moral complexity where power prefers certainty.
Quote Details
| Topic | Poetry |
|---|---|
| Source | “Remarks at Amherst College on the Arts,” Amherst, Massachusetts, October 26, 1963 — John F. Kennedy speech (contains the quoted passage on poetry and power). |
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