John F Kennedy's 'don't ask' speech inspired by school headmaster

"In his 14-minute 1961 inaugural speech, which addressed the United States' role in the Cold War, Kennedy told Americans to ''ask not what your country can do for you - ask what you can do for your country.''
Kennedy, it turns out, had heard something like it before.
Two documents unearthed by MSNBC television host Chris Matthews in his book "Jack Kennedy: Elusive Hero,'' show that the future president's headmaster at the elite Choate boarding school in Connecticut in the early 1930s had used a similar exhortation."
via Telegraph /more