Robert F. Kennedy quotes
Born
November 20, 1925 Brookline, Massachusetts, U.S.
Died
June 6, 1968.
Occupation
Lawyer, politician.
Robert Francis Kennedy was an American politician and lawyer from Massachusetts. He served as a United States senator from New York from January 1965 until his assassination in June 1968.
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.
– Robert F. Kennedy
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.
– Robert F. Kennedy
I have told friends and supporters who are urging me to run that I would not oppose President Johnson under any foreseeable circumstances.
– Robert F. Kennedy
Progress is a nice word. But change is its motivator. And change has its enemies.
– Robert F. Kennedy
Tragedy is a tool for the living to gain wisdom, not a guide by which to live.
– Robert F. Kennedy
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.
– Robert F. Kennedy
I believe that, as long as there is plenty, poverty is evil.
– Robert F. Kennedy
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.
– Robert F. Kennedy
The free way of life proposes ends, but it does not prescribe means.
– Robert F. Kennedy
Yesterday, we sought telescopes good enough to see all the planets. Today, we seek vehicles good enough to reach them.
– Robert F. Kennedy
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.
– Robert F. Kennedy
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.
– Robert F. Kennedy
Some men see things as they are, and ask why. I dream of things that never were, and ask why not.
– Robert F. Kennedy
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.
– Robert F. Kennedy
Elections remind us not only of the rights but the responsibilities of citizenship in a democracy.
– Robert F. Kennedy
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.
– Robert F. Kennedy
I was the seventh of nine children. When you come from that far down you have to struggle to survive.
– Robert F. Kennedy
The fact that free men persist in the search for the truth is the essential difference between Communism and Democracy.
– Robert F. Kennedy
Wars of any magnitude release powerful social and economic forces which can change the whole face of the world.
– Robert F. Kennedy
I come from a family that has always emphasized and enjoyed sports – golf, tennis, football, baseball and the rest.
– Robert F. Kennedy
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.
– Robert F. Kennedy
One of the great creative statesmen of our age was Franklin Roosevelt. He was creative precisely because he preferred experiment to ideology.
– Robert F. Kennedy
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.
– Robert F. Kennedy
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.
– Robert F. Kennedy
Ultimately, America’s answer to the intolerant man is diversity, the very diversity which our heritage of religious freedom has inspired.
– Robert F. Kennedy
The history of antitrust law enforcement shows that successful antitrust prosecutions have often strengthened and brought vitality to extremely large companies and businesses.
– Robert F. Kennedy
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.
– Robert F. Kennedy
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.
– Robert F. Kennedy
Martin Luther King dedicated his life to love and to justice between fellow human beings. He died in the cause of that effort.
– Robert F. Kennedy
From the first moment of independence, the United States has been dedicated to innovation as a way of government and a way of life.
– Robert F. Kennedy
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?
– Robert F. Kennedy
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.
– Robert F. Kennedy
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.
– Robert F. Kennedy
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.
– Robert F. Kennedy
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.
– Robert F. Kennedy
Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly.
– Robert F. Kennedy
People say I am ruthless. I am not ruthless. And if I find the man who is calling me ruthless, I shall destroy him.
– Robert F. Kennedy
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.
– Robert F. Kennedy
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.
– Robert F. Kennedy
The poor man looks upon the law as an enemy, not as a friend. For him, the law is always taking something away.
– Robert F. Kennedy