“Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.”
This quote has no known author and is recorded as an anonymous proverb.
About this quote
The line inverts a question that people are used to asking, and it was aimed at a country that had been given a great deal of help. Read now, it is a demand made on the reader rather than the audience, which is why it has been borrowed by people who are not being asked for anything.