Top 245 Quotes & Sayings by Robert Kennedy
Explore popular quotes and sayings by an American politician Robert Kennedy.
Last updated on November 21, 2024.
The world of sports knows no religious, racial or political differences. Athletes, from whatever land they come, speak the same language. The lessons of competition are lessons for life.
Elections remind us not only of the rights but the responsibilities of citizenship in a democracy.
Whenever men take the law into their own hands, the loser is the law. And when the law loses, freedom languishes.
It is not enough to understand, or to see clearly. The future will be shaped in the arena of human activity, by those willing to commit their minds and their bodies to the task.
Every generation inherits a world it never made; and, as it does so, it automatically becomes the trustee of that world for those who come after. In due course, each generation makes its own accounting to its children.
Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current that can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.
Now I can go back to being ruthless again.
But suppose God is black? What if we go to Heaven and we, all our lives, have treated the Negro as an inferior, and God is there, and we look up and He is not white? What then is our response?
Desegregation of schools does not automatically transform them into better schools. It is only a step. The larger goal is to see that the education of our youth is not merely desegregated, but that it is excellent.
In the final analysis, poverty is a condition of helplessness - of inability to cope with the conditions of existence in our complex society.
One of the primary purposes of civilization - and certainly its primary strength - is the guarantee that family life can flourish in unity, peace, and order.
Tragedy is a tool for the living to gain wisdom, not a guide by which to live.
The history of antitrust law enforcement shows that successful antitrust prosecutions have often strengthened and brought vitality to extremely large companies and businesses.
If freedom makes social progress possible, so social progress strengthens and enlarges freedom.
No one needs to tell me about the importance of the free press in a democratic society or about the essential role a newspaper can play in its community.
The tyranny of Communism is as old as the Pharaohs and the Pyramids - that the State stands above all men and their individual aspirations.
Everything that makes man's life worthwhile - family, work, education, a place to rear one's children and a place to rest one's head - all this depends on the decisions of government; all can be swept away by a government which does not heed the demands of its people, and I mean all of its people.
President Kennedy's election was such an enlargement. It expanded religious freedom to include the highest office in the land. President Kennedy's administration was such an enlargement. It advanced the day when the bars of intolerance against all minority groups will be lifted, not only for the presidency, but for all aspects of our national life.
If any man claims the Negro should be content... let him say he would willingly change the color of his skin and go to live in the Negro section of a large city. Then and only then has he a right to such a claim.
The glory of justice and the majesty of law are created not just by the Constitution - nor by the courts - nor by the officers of the law - nor by the lawyers - but by the men and women who constitute our society - who are the protectors of the law as they are themselves protected by the law.
Lack of education, old age, bad health or discrimination - these are causes of poverty, and the way to attack it is to go to the root.
America's answer to the intolerant man is diversity - the very diversity which our heritage of religious freedom has inspired.
One-fifth of the people are against everything all the time.
Few will have the greatness to bend history itself; but each of us can work to change a small portion of events, and in the total; of all those acts will be written the history of this generation.
What has violence ever accomplished? What has it ever created? No martyr's cause has ever been stilled by an assassin's bullet. No wrongs have ever been righted by riots and civil disorders. A sniper is only a coward, not a hero; and an uncontrolled or uncontrollable mob is only the voice of madness, not the voice of the people.
Every society gets the kind of criminal it deserves. What is equally true is that every community gets the kind of law enforcement it insists on.
Communism counts its opportunities in terms of decades - not of weeks. Its means of aggression consist not only of nuclear weapons and missiles with enormous boosters, and not only of spies, agents and terrorists, but of great masses of men and women, deluded by a common ideology which inspires them with a false hope.
All of us might wish at times that we lived in a more tranquil world, but we don't. And if our times are difficult and perplexing, so are they challenging and filled with opportunity.
People say I am ruthless. I am not ruthless. And if I find the man who is calling me ruthless, I shall destroy him.
The most significant civil rights problem is voting. Each citizen's right to vote is fundamental to all the other rights of citizenship and the Civil Rights Acts of 1957 and 1960 make it the responsibility of the Department of Justice to protect that right.
Ultimately, America's answer to the intolerant man is diversity, the very diversity which our heritage of religious freedom has inspired.
Martin Luther King dedicated his life to love and to justice between fellow human beings. He died in the cause of that effort.
Lawyers have their duties as citizens, but they also have special duties as lawyers. Their obligations go far deeper than earning a living as specialists in corporation or tax law. They have a continuing responsibility to uphold the fundamental principles of justice from which the law cannot depart.
The leaders of the world face no greater task than that of avoiding nuclear war. While preserving the cause of freedom, we must seek abolition of war through programs of general and complete disarmament. The Test-Ban Treaty of 1963 represents a significant beginning in this immense undertaking.
The right to vote is the easiest of all rights to grant.
In the long run, a flexible sentencing procedure which works to rehabilitate offenders offers the best hope in the majority of cases in the Federal courts.
Unions, by and large, are democratic organizations with freely chosen leaders and policies determined by the membership. They concern themselves with individual dignity not only in their aims but in their method. We have no better example of what is worthy of emulation abroad than the workings of a good union.
Yesterday, we fought wars which destroyed cities. Today, we are concerned with avoiding a war which will destroy the earth. We can adapt atomic energy to produce electricity and move ships, but can we control its use in anger?
The ultimate relationship between justice and law will be an eternal subject for speculation and analysis. But it may be said that in a democratic society, law is the form which free men give to justice.
In truth, the world is now a seamless web from which no nation, large or small, young or old, can disassociate itself. Every attitude and every action of every nation can affect the welfare and security of every other nation around the globe.
I thought they'd get one of us, but Jack, after all he's been through, never worried about it I thought it would be me.
Tolerating organized crime promotes the cheap philosophy that everything is a racket. It promotes cynicism among adults. It contributes to the confusion of the young and to the increase of juvenile delinquency.
We know that we cannot live together without rules which tell us what is right and what is wrong, what is permitted and what is prohibited. We know that it is law which enables men to live together, that creates order out of chaos. We know that law is the glue that holds civilization together.
There are people in every time and every land who want to stop history in its tracks. They fear the future, mistrust the present, and invoke the security of a comfortable past which, in fact, never existed.
Progress is a nice word. But change is its motivator. And change has its enemies.
Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly.
I believe that, as long as there is plenty, poverty is evil.
Automation provides us with wondrous increases of production and information, but does it tell us what to do with the men the machines displace? Modern industry gives us the capacity for unparalleled wealth - but where is our capacity to make that wealth meaningful to the poor of every nation?
We develop the kind of citizens we deserve. If a large number of our children grow up into frustration and poverty, we must expect to pay the price.
In my judgment, physical fitness is basic to all forms of excellence and to a strong, confident nation.
I don't believe newspaper reporters can substitute for a district attorney, but a newspaper has a very valid investigative role. Newspaper reports on corruption in government, racketeering and organized crime conditions can be very helpful to your communities and the whole country.
Ultimately, Communism must be defeated by progressive political programs which wipe out the poverty, misery, and discontent on which it thrives.
Hand in hand with freedom of speech goes the power to be heard, to share in the decisions of government which shape men's lives.
The Gross National Product measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country. It measures everything, in short, except that which makes life worthwhile, and it can tell us everything about America - except whether we are proud to be Americans.
It is easy to overlook the importance of the young in underdeveloped countries. It is the natural course for nations, and diplomats, and those who publish newspapers, to speak to the established order. Seeking out the young requires a conscious effort.
Some men see things as they are, and say why. I dream of things that never were, and say why not.
Let us dedicate ourselves to what the Greeks wrote so many years ago: to tame the savageness of man and make gentle the life of this world.
Circumstances of crimes vary. So do motives. And so do prospects for rehabilitation. The number of imponderables makes it impossible to sentence by formula and still sentence justly.
What is objectionable, what is dangerous about extremists, is not that they are extreme, but that they are intolerant. The evil is not what they say about their cause, but what they say about their opponents.
One of the great creative statesmen of our age was Franklin Roosevelt. He was creative precisely because he preferred experiment to ideology.
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