Did Teddy Roosevelt first say the famous phrase Ask not what your county can do for you ask what you can do for your country or did JFK?

Answer 1

No, Teddy Roosevelt never uttered this quote.

President John F. Kennedy made this comment during his January 1961 innauguration speech.

However, he is not the quote's originator, but was rather paraphrasing the following historical quotes:

• "It is now the moment when by common consent we pause to become conscious of our national life and to rejoice in it, to recall what our country has done for each of us, and to ask ourselves what we can do for our country in return." - Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., Memorial Day speech in Keene, New Hampshire (30 May 1884)
• "As has often been said, the youth who loves his Alma Mater will always ask, not 'What can she do for me?' but 'What can I do for her?'" - Lee Baron Russel Briggs, in "College Life", Routine and Ideals (1904)
• "In the great fulfillment we must have a citizenship less concerned about what the government can do for it, and more anxious about what it can do for the nation." - Warren G. Harding, Speech at the Republican National Convention, Chicago, Illinois (7 June, 1916)
• "Are you a politician asking what your country can do for you or a zealous one asking what you can do for your country? If you are the first, then you are a parasite; if the second, then you are an oasis in a desert." - Khalil Gibran, The New Frontier(1925), translated from Arabic
• The earliest incarnation of the quote purportedly came from the ancient Roman orator Cicero, in the first century B.C., translated from Latin. However, no precise wording is available.

Answer 2

It was John F. Kennedy who said this phrase. Yes he said it but he plagirized it from Thomas Jefferson. After Jefferson, Warren Harding also used it. Thomas Jefferson wrote it!