Speaking at a White House dinner honouring Nobel Prize winners of the Western Hemisphere, John F. Kennedy John F. Kennedy welcomes the assembled laureates and guests. He opens with humour, describing the gathering as an exceptional concentration of talent and knowledge, surpassed perhaps only by Thomas Jefferson dining alone. Kennedy uses Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin as examples of the wide-ranging intellectual achievement associated with earlier American public life.

Kennedy then stresses that the Nobel Prize is international rather than national in character, citing Alfred Nobel’s instruction that nationality should not influence the selection of recipients. He argues that knowledge similarly develops across borders, with researchers and thinkers building on the work of people from different countries and generations. While noting the number of Nobel laureates associated with the Western Hemisphere, Kennedy presents the dinner chiefly as a celebration of the pursuit of knowledge and peace, and as encouragement for younger generations to continue those efforts.