Top 245 Quotes & Sayings by Robert Kennedy - Page 2

We must continue to prove to the world that we can provide a rising standard of living for all men without loss of civil rights or human dignity to any man.

A high standard of living cannot remain the exclusive possession of the West - and the sooner we can help other peoples to develop their resources, raise their living standards, and strengthen their national independence, the safer the world will be for us all.

In the last analysis, our every right is only worth what our lawyer makes it worth.

I am deeply impressed with the gravity and wisdom with which most federal judges approach the responsibility of sentencing. It is a difficult, soul-searching task at best.

Wars of any magnitude release powerful social and economic forces which can change the whole face of the world.

The fact that free men persist in the search for the truth is the essential difference between Communism and Democracy.

Within the United States, we have put great emphasis upon political freedoms. Because it has been our experience that these freedoms can lead to others.

When I was counsel for the Senate Rackets Committee, about 25% of the important leads which our committee developed came from newspapers. This increased my respect for those courageous newspapers which assisted us. It also caused me to look with wonderment at some of the newspapers that did not.

In the cases that come before the Department of Justice involving a wide range of unlawful activities, we see repeated evidence of family and community failures.

From the first moment of independence, the United States has been dedicated to innovation as a way of government and a way of life.

If I get to be president, what can I do anyway? With Congress and the press, what chance do I have to make basic changes?

Every American has the duty to obey the law and the right to expect that the law will be enforced.

There has been far too much hypocrisy in the field of civil rights. It is easy enough to give rousing speeches or call for legislation which has no possibility of passage.

When companies get together secretly to fix prices and attempt to eliminate competition, honest businessmen suffer. I think this is wrong.

When our forbears - yours and mine - came to America, they came because this country promised them something. It promised them an opportunity, nourished by education, not merely to grind for a bare living, but to strive for a good life.

In government, our chief executives have been lawyers. The great majority of our cabinets and congresses are and have been men trained in the law. They have provided the leadership and the statecraft and the store of strength when it was needed.

The free way of life proposes ends, but it does not prescribe means.

The Gross National Product includes the destruction of the redwoods and the death of Lake Superior. It grows with the production of napalm and missiles and nuclear warheads... It includes... the broadcasting of television programs which glorify violence to sell goods to our children.

I come from a family that has always emphasized and enjoyed sports - golf, tennis, football, baseball and the rest.

It is one thing to open job opportunities. It is another to train people to fill them, or to persuade American enterprise to seek Negro as well as white applicants.

Since the days of Greece and Rome, when the word 'citizen' was a title of honor, we have often seen more emphasis put on the rights of citizenship than on its responsibilities.

Nothing is more false than the notion that the triumph of Communism is inevitable or that the Communists are steadily pushing the free world into a corner.

It is the right of government to protect the weak; it is the right of the weak to find in their courts fair treatment before the law.

When historians consider the significance of the Berlin crises of the mid-20th century, I do not believe that they will record it as an incident in the encirclement of freedom. The true view, in my judgment, will be to see it rather as a major episode in the recession of communism.

We know that freedom has many dimensions. It is the right of the man who tills the land to own the land; the right of the workers to join together to seek better conditions of labor; the right of businessmen to use ingenuity and foresight to produce and distribute without arbitrary interference in a truly competitive economy.

Good union leaders make excellent public leaders in the legislative and executive branches.

President Kennedy has named two Negroes to District Judgeships and appointed Thurgood Marshall to the United States Court of Appeals. When I came to the Department of Justice, there were only ten Negroes employed as lawyers; not a single Negro served as a United States Attorney - or ever had in the history of the country. That has been changed.

Even as my father grew up in Boston, Massachusetts, signs told him: 'No Irish Need Apply.'

American books reflect our common heritage with many other nations and their influence upon our culture. The influences are endless, linking us with the rest of the world. Thus, they are good ambassadors for us.

Where aspirations outstrip opportunities, law-abiding society becomes the victim. Attitudes of contempt toward the law are forged in this crucible and form the inner core of the beliefs of organized adult crime.

It certainly should not surprise us that a young person without any real stake in a legitimate occupation or career may get into trouble more easily. Such persons readily accept the idea that they have been unjustly deprived of money, status, and opportunity.

It is one thing to open the schools to all children regardless of race. It is another to train the teachers, to build the classrooms, and to attempt to eliminate the effects of past educational deficiencies. It is still another to find ways to feed the incentive to learn and keep children in school.

Our generation was born during the turmoil following the First World War. That war marked the dividing line - at least for the Western World - between the comfortable security of the 19th century and the instability and flux of our own time.

Freedom possesses many meanings. It speaks not merely in terms of political and religious liberty but also in terms of economic and social progress.

To the extent that laws are founded on morality and on logic, they can lead men's hearts and minds.

I was the seventh of nine children. When you come from that far down you have to struggle to survive.

Let me make it clear that the Youth Employment Opportunities Act of 1961 is not primarily concerned with delinquency prevention. Rather, it is designed to help all types of young men or women who suffer deficiencies of training or opportunity which keep them unemployed.

Communism everywhere has paid the price of rigidity and dogmatism. Freedom has the strength of compassion and flexibility. It has, above all, the strength of intellectual honesty.

I believe indeterminate sentencing can be extremely useful, but I also believe that any such system should always take into consideration the special knowledge as to the facts in a case which only the trial judge possesses.

The eradication of racial and religious prejudice in the United States - and in the rest of the world as well - is a long-term process.

I can understand the Chinese Wall: it was built as a defense against marauders. But a wall such as that in Berlin, built to prevent people from seeking freedom, is almost beyond comprehension.

Satellite communications connect television screens in Japan with television cameras in England, and the distance of half a world loses its meaning.

Those who challenge the law in one or another of its aspects weaken the whole legal structure of society. For one man to disobey a law he does not like is to invite others to disobey another law which he may regard as indispensable to his own livelihood - or life.

Yesterday, we sought telescopes good enough to see all the planets. Today, we seek vehicles good enough to reach them.

The United States was born in revolution and nurtured by struggle. Throughout our history, the American people have befriended and supported all those who seek independence and a better way of life.

The hardest problems of all in law enforcement are those involving a conflict of law and local customs. History has recorded many occasions when the moral sense of a nation produced judicial decisions, such as the 1954 decision in Brown v. Board of Education, which required difficult local adjustments.

One can find a squalid America as easily as a scenic America; a bitter, hopeless America as easily as the confident America of polyethylene wrapping, new cars, and camping trips in the summer.

What is learned on the athletic field is not forgotten, nor are the lessons of character that are forged there ever lost. Consider the contributions in the field of public life, business, law, medicine, and the military of those who actively participated in athletics.

The poor man looks upon the law as an enemy, not as a friend. For him, the law is always taking something away.

If the purpose of the wall was to destroy Berlin, Herr Ulbricht and his cohorts have erred sadly. Berlin is not only going to continue to exist - it's going to grow and grow and grow. Its ties to West Germany will not be severed.

We will find neither national purpose nor personal satisfaction in a mere continuation of economic progress, in an endless amassing of worldly goods. We cannot measure national spirit by the Dow Jones Average, nor national achievement by the Gross National Product.

The travail of freedom and justice is not easy, but nothing serious and important in life is easy. The history of humanity has been a continuing struggle against temptation and tyranny - and very little worthwhile has ever been achieved without pain.

Science began as one of the noblest expressions of man's reason. It will continue to serve humanity so long as it never forgets that human beings remain the heart of its purpose.

I like to be involved in politics. I like to be involved in government. I've been in politics all my life. I would like to remain in government. I don't think that's so sinister.

Our scientists grapple with the difficulties of placing a man on the moon, but the immediately troubling concern of our society is whether men of different races can sit together at a lunch counter.

I do not run for the presidency merely to oppose any man, but to propose new policies. I run because I am convinced that this country is on a perilous course and because I have such strong feelings about what must be done, and I feel that I'm obliged to do all I can.

We in the United States believe in the protection of minorities; we recognize the contributions that they can make and the leadership that they can provide; and we do not believe that any people - whether majority or minority, or individual human beings - are 'expendable' in the cause of theory or of policy.

I am ashamed to report that my father, who is 73, has never been beaten by any of his four sons in golf. We have all become resigned to the fact that he has determined that he won't be beaten.

I have told friends and supporters who are urging me to run that I would not oppose President Johnson under any foreseeable circumstances.

Every time we turn our heads the other way when we see the law flouted, when we tolerate what we know to be wrong, when we close our eyes and ears to the corrupt because we are too busy or too frightened, when we fail to speak up and speak out, we strike a blow against freedom and decency and justice.