Top 245 Quotes & Sayings by Robert Kennedy - Page 4

It is an unfinished society that we offer the world-a society that is forever committed to change, to improvement and to growth, that will never stagnate in the certitude of ideology or the finalities of dogma.

Too much and too long, we seem to have surrendered community excellence and community values in the mere accumulation of material things.

Victims of the violence are black and white, rich and poor, young and old, famous and unknown. They are most important of all, human beings whom other human beings loved and needed.

All of us will ultimately be judged on the effort we have contributed to building a new world order.

Our future may lie beyond our vision, but it is not completely beyond our control. It is the shaping impulse of America that neither fate nor nature nor the irresistible tides of history, but the work of our own hands, matched to reason and principle, that will determine our destiny. There is pride in that, even arrogance, but there is also experience and truth. In any event, it is the only way we can live.

The gross national product includes air pollution and advertising for cigarettes, and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage. It counts special locks for our doors, and jails for the people who break them ... It does not allow for the health of our families, the quality of thier education, or the joy of their play.

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

Punishment is not prevention. History offers cold comfort to those who think grievance and despair can be subdued by force.

Oh no, oh no... don't lift me, don't lift me.

Don't get mad, get even.

I love this city. If I am elected, I'll move the White House to San Francisco. Everybody's so friendly.

Industrial agriculture now accounts for over half of America's water pollution.

Yet it is the one essential, vital quality for those who seek to change a world which yields most painfully to change.

We in Government have begun to recognize the critical work which must be done at all levels-local, State and Federal-in ending the pollution of our waters.

Killing one man is murder. Killing millions is a statistic

About one month before he was killed, when asked by David Frost how his obituary should read: Something about the fact that I made some contribution to either my country, or those who were less well off. I think back to what Camus wrote about the fact that perhaps this world is a world in which children suffer, but we can lessen the number of suffering children, and if you do not do this, then who will do this? I'd like to feel that I'd done something to lessen that suffering.

Each generation makes it's own accounting to its children.

It is from numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is shaped.

Courage is the virtue that President Kennedy most admired. He sought out those people who had demonstrated in some way, whether it was on a battlefield or a baseball diamond, in a speech or fighting for a cause, that they had courage that they would stand up, that they could be counted on.

Religion is a salve for confusion and misdirection.

I run because I am convinced that this country is on a perilous course and I have such strong feelings about what must be done.

Perhaps to some extent we have lost sight of the fact that LSD can be very, very helpful in our society if used properly.

You knew that what is given or granted can be taken away, that what is begged can be refused; but that what is earned is kept.

Even government by the consent of the governed, as in our own Constitution, must be limited in its power to act against its people; so that there may be no interference with the right to worship, or with the security of the home; no arbitrary imposition of pains or penalties by officials high or low; no restrictions on the freedom of men to seek education or work or opportunity of any kind, so that each man may become all he is capable of becoming.

It is not more bigness that should be our goal. We must attempt, rather, to bring people back to...the warmth of community, to the worth of individual effort and responsibility...and of individuals working together as a community, to better their lives and their children's future.

Like it or not, we live in interesting times. They are times of danger and uncertainty; but they are also the most creative of any time in the history of mankind. And everyone here will ultimately be judged - will ultimately judge himself - on the effort he has contributed to building a new world society and the extent to which his ideals and goals have shaped that effort.

We develop the kind of citizens we deserve.

GNP measures neither our courage, our wisdom neither our compassion. It measures everything except what makes life worthwhile

Some men see what is, and ask 'Why?' I see what might be, and ask 'Why Not?'

GDP does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education, or the joy of their play

Men and women with freed minds may often be mistaken, but they are seldom fooled. They may be influenced, but they cannot be intimidated. They may be perplexed, but they will never be lost.

Democracy is no easy form of government. Few nations have been able to sustain it. For it requires that we take the chances of freedom; that the liberating play of reason be brought to bear on events filled with passion; that dissent be allowed to make its appeal for acceptance; that men chance error in their search for the truth.

The Gross National Product measures everything except that which makes life worthwhile.

If freedom makes social progress possible, so social progress strengthens and enlarges freedom. The two are inseparable partners in the great adventure of humanity.

Every dictatorship has ultimately strangled in the web of repression it wove for its people, making mistakes that could not be corrected because criticism was prohibited.

I now know how Tojo felt when he was planning Pearl Harbor.

I believe that in this generation those with the courage to enter the conflict will find themselves with companions in every corner of the world.

I believe that as long as a single man may try, any unjustifiable barrier against his efforts is a barrier against mankind.

If communist unions ever gain a position to exercise influence in the transport lanes of the world, the free world will have suffered a staggering blow.

I am not one of those who think that coming in second or third is winning.

In my judgment, the slogan "black power" and what has been associated with it has set the civil rights movement back considerably in the United States over the period of the last several months.

Each nation has different obstacles and different goals, shaped by the vagaries of history and of experience. Yet as I talk to young people around the world I am impressed not by the diversity but by the closeness of their goals, their desires and their concerns and their hope for the future.

It is not realistic or hard-headed to solve problems and take action unguided by ultimate moral aims and values, although we all know some who claim that it is so. In my judgement, it is thoughtless folly. For it ignores the realities of human faith and of passion and of belief; forces ultimately more powerful than all the calculations of our economists or of our generals. Of course to adhere to standards, to idealism, to vision in the face of immediate dangers takes great courage and takes self-confidence. But we also know that only those who dare to fail greatly, can ever achieve greatly.

Courage is the most important attribute of a lawyer. It is more important than competence or vision. It can never be an elective in any law school. It can never be de-limited, dated or outworn, and it should pervade the heart, the halls of justice and the chambers of the mind.

If our constitution had followed the style of Saint Paul, the First Amendment might have concluded: "But the greatest of these is speech." In the darkness of tyranny, this is the key to the sunlight. If it is granted, all doors open. If it is withheld, none.

What happens to the country, to the world, depends on what we do with what others have left us.

Goethe tells us in his greatest poem that Faust lost the liberty of his soul when he said to the passing moment, 'Stay, thou art so fair.

I love this city. If I'm elected, I will move the White House to San Francisco. I went to Fisherman's Wharf and they even let me into Allioto`s. It may be Baghdad by the Bay to you, but to me it's Resurrection City

In Massachusetts they [Democratic politicians] steal, in California they feud, and in New York they lie.

...if we want to meet the obligations of our civilization and our culture which are to create communities for our children that provide them with the same opportunities for dignity and enrichment as the communities that our parents gave us, we've got to start by protecting that infrastructure; the air that we breathe, the water that we drink, the landscapes that enrich us.

All do not develop in the same manner, or at the same pace. Nations, like men, often march to the beat of different drummers, and the precise solutions of the United States can neither be dictated nor transplanted to others. What is important is that all nations must march toward increasing freedom; toward justice for all; toward a society strong and flexible enough to meet the demands of all its own people, and a world of immense and dizzying change.

My views on birth control are somewhat distorted by the fact that I was seventh of nine children.

Your life can be anything you want it to be.

The road toward equality of freedom is not easy, and great cost and danger march alongside us. We are committed to peaceful and nonviolent change, and that is important for all to understand - though all change is unsettling. Still, even in the turbulence of protest and struggle is greater hope for the future, as men learn to claim and achieve for themselves the rights formerly petitioned from others.

Sometimes people think that because you have money and position you are immune from the human experience. But I can feel as lonesome and lost as the next man when I turn the key in the door and go into an empty house that is usually full of kids and dogs.

We know that if one man's rights are denied, the rights of all are endangered.

I'm tired of chasing people.

The enlargement of liberty for individual human beings must be the supreme goal and abiding practice of any western society.

Prejudice exists and probably will continue to `but we have tried to make progress and we are making progress. We are not going to accept the status quo.'

It will help erase the idea that politics is a second-rate profession and a dirty business.