Top 100 Robert Kennedy Quotes
#1. 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.
Robert Kennedy
#2. 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.
Robert Kennedy
#3. 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 Kennedy
#4. Too much and too long, we seem to have surrendered community excellence and community values in the mere accumulation of material things.
Robert Kennedy
#5. It is from numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is shaped.
Robert Kennedy
#6. 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.
Robert Kennedy
#7. 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.
Robert Kennedy
#8. 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.
Robert Kennedy
#9. Men without hope, resigned to despair and oppression, do not make revolutions. It is when expectation replaces submission, when despair is touched with the awareness of possibility, that the forces of human desire and the passion for justice are unloosed.
Robert Kennedy
#10. 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.
Robert Kennedy
#11. 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.
Robert Kennedy
#12. 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.
Robert Kennedy
#13. Freedom possesses many meanings. It speaks not merely in terms of political and religious liberty but also in terms of economic and social progress.
Robert Kennedy
#14. 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.
Robert Kennedy
#15. 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.
Robert Kennedy
#16. 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 Kennedy
#17. 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 Kennedy
#19. 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.
Robert Kennedy
#20. 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.
Robert Kennedy
#21. 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.
Robert Kennedy
#22. To the extent that laws are founded on morality and on logic, they can lead men's hearts and minds.
Robert Kennedy
#23. All of us will ultimately be judged on the effort we have contributed to building a new world order.
Robert Kennedy
#24. 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.
Robert Kennedy
#25. We can master change not though force or fear, but only though the free work of an understanding mind, though an openness to new knowledge and fresh outlooks, which can only strengthen the most fragile and most powerful of human gifts: the gift of reason.
Robert Kennedy
#26. The history of antitrust law enforcement shows that successful antitrust prosecutions have often strengthened and brought vitality to extremely large companies and businesses.
Robert Kennedy
#27. 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.
Robert Kennedy
#28. 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.
Robert Kennedy
#29. In Massachusetts they [Democratic politicians] steal, in California they feud, and in New York they lie.
Robert Kennedy
#31. 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.
Robert Kennedy
#32. 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.
Robert Kennedy
#33. 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.
Robert Kennedy
#34. 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 Kennedy
#35. Some believe there is nothing one man or one woman can do against the enormous array of the world's ills ... Yet many of the world's great movements, of thought and action, have flowed from the work of a single man
Robert Kennedy
#37. 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 Kennedy
#38. I believe that as long as a single man may try, any unjustifiable barrier against his efforts is a barrier against mankind.
Robert Kennedy
#39. 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.
Robert Kennedy
#40. Even as my father grew up in Boston, Massachusetts, signs told him: 'No Irish Need Apply.'
Robert Kennedy
#41. 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.
Robert Kennedy
#42. Punishment is not prevention. History offers cold comfort to those who think grievance and despair can be subdued by force.
Robert Kennedy
#43. Martin Luther King dedicated his life to love and to justice between fellow human beings. He died in the cause of that effort.
Robert Kennedy
#44. Yet it is the one essential, vital quality for those who seek to change a world which yields most painfully to change.
Robert Kennedy
#45. I have told friends and supporters who are urging me to run that I would not oppose President Johnson under any foreseeable circumstances.
Robert Kennedy
#46. Wars of any magnitude release powerful social and economic forces which can change the whole face of the world.
Robert Kennedy
#47. In my judgment, physical fitness is basic to all forms of excellence and to a strong, confident nation.
Robert Kennedy
#48. 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.
Robert Kennedy
#49. I love this city. If I am elected, I'll move the White House to San Francisco. Everybody's so friendly.
Robert Kennedy
#50. [The overthrow of the Castro regime] is the top priority of the US government. - all else is secondary - no time, no effort, or manpower is to be spared.
Robert Kennedy
#51. 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?
Robert Kennedy
#52. I come from a family that has always emphasized and enjoyed sports - golf, tennis, football, baseball and the rest.
Robert Kennedy
#53. 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.
Robert Kennedy
#54. 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 Kennedy
#56. 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.
Robert Kennedy
#57. 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 Kennedy
#58. 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 Kennedy
#59. 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 Kennedy
#60. I now know how Tojo felt when he was planning Pearl Harbor.
Robert Kennedy
#61. 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.
Robert Kennedy
#62. The intolerant man will not rely on persuasion, or on the worth of the idea. He would deny to others the very freedom of opinion or of dissent which he so stridently demands for himself. He cannot trust democracy.
Robert Kennedy
#63. In the last analysis, our every right is only worth what our lawyer makes it worth.
Robert Kennedy
#64. 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.
Robert Kennedy
#65. 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 Kennedy
#66. We know that if one man's rights are denied, the rights of all are endangered.
Robert Kennedy
#67. 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.
Robert Kennedy
#68. 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.
Robert Kennedy
#70. When companies get together secretly to fix prices and attempt to eliminate competition, honest businessmen suffer. I think this is wrong.
Robert Kennedy
#71. 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 Kennedy
#72. Our attitude towards immigration reflects our faith in the American ideal. We have always believed it possible for men and women who start at the bottom to rise as far as the talent and energy allow. Neither race nor place of birth should affect their chances.
Robert Kennedy
#73. 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.
Robert Kennedy
#74. 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.
Robert Kennedy
#75. 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.
Robert Kennedy
#76. 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 Kennedy
#77. 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.
Robert Kennedy
#78. If freedom makes social progress possible, so social progress strengthens and enlarges freedom.
Robert Kennedy
#79. 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 Kennedy
#80. The greatest truth must be recognition that in every man, in every child is the potential for greatness.
Robert Kennedy
#81. The right to vote is the easiest of all rights to grant.
Robert Kennedy
#82. 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 Kennedy
#83. GDP does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education, or the joy of their play
Robert Kennedy
#84. Courage is the most important attribute of a lawyer.
Robert Kennedy
#85. Nations around the world look to us for the leadership not merely by strength of arms but by strength of our convictions.
Robert Kennedy
#86. 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?
Robert Kennedy
#87. 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.
Robert Kennedy
#88. Good union leaders make excellent public leaders in the legislative and executive branches.
Robert Kennedy
#89. After all, a bank without assets is hardly a bank at all.
Robert Kennedy
#90. The tyranny of Communism is as old as the Pharaohs and the Pyramids - that the State stands above all men and their individual aspirations.
Robert Kennedy
#92. In the final analysis, poverty is a condition of helplessness - of inability to cope with the conditions of existence in our complex society.
Robert Kennedy
#93. 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.
Robert Kennedy
#94. 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.
Robert Kennedy
#95. 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.
Robert Kennedy
#96. Elections remind us not only of the rights but the responsibilities of citizenship in a democracy.
Robert Kennedy
#97. 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.
Robert Kennedy
#98. 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 Kennedy
#99. He tells so many lies that he convinces himself after a while that he's telling the truth. He just doesn't recognize truth or falsehood.
Robert Kennedy
#100. Yesterday, we sought telescopes good enough to see all the planets. Today, we seek vehicles good enough to reach them.
Robert Kennedy
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