Top 100 Quotes About Robert Kennedy
#1. It [his brothers assassination] made Robert Kennedy, a man unprepared for introspection, think for the first time in his life, what he wanted to do, and what he stood for.
Jack Newfield
#2. Robert Kennedy was such an inspiring figure. His interest in politics seemed to come not from a desire for power, but from a need to help our society live up to its ideals.
Elisabeth Shue
#3. Unlike most politicians who follow their audience, (Robert) Kennedy tried to lead his.
Thurston Clarke
#4. My interest in chemistry was started by reading Robert Kennedy Duncan's popular books while a high school student in Des Moines, Iowa, so that after some delay when it was possible for me to go to college I had definitely decided to specialize in chemistry.
Wallace Carothers
#5. Robert Kennedy was inspired to take on organized crime by watching the landmark movie On the Waterfront.
David Talbot
#6. Robert Kennedy identified with people, not data, or institutions, or theories. Poverty was a specific black face for him, not a manila folder full of statistics.
Jack Newfield
#7. I have loved the Department of Justice ever since, as a young boy, I watched Robert Kennedy prove during the Civil Rights Movement how the department can - and must - always be a force for that which is right.
Eric Holder
#8. But they were as different as fire and ice. Robert Kennedy thought Eugene McCarthy was pompous, petty, and venal. McCarthy thought Kennedy was a spoiled, unintelligent demagogue.
Jack Newfield
#9. They can gas me, but I am famous. I have achieved in one day what it took Robert Kennedy all his life to do.
Sirhan Sirhan
#10. All his life he [Robert Kennedy] had been schooled that nothing was worse than to finish second. But crushing fears are no longer so crushing once they are experienced.
Jack Newfield
#11. In 1974, when I started working with the material that became 'Horses,' a lot of our great voices had died. We'd lost Jimi Hendrix and Jim Morrison and Janis Joplin, and people like Robert Kennedy, Martin Luther King and Malcolm X.
Patti Smith
#12. Hillary had never run for office before, but she decided to give it a try. She began her campaign the way she always does new things, by listening and and learning. And after a tough battle, New York elected her to the seat once held by another outsider, Robert Kennedy.
William J. Clinton
#13. The people I really most admire are Robert Kennedy and Franklin Roosevelt. If you know someone, it is very hard to revere them.
Ken Livingstone
#14. His enemies said he [Robert Kennedy] was consumed with selfish ambition, a ruthless opportunist exploiting his brother's legend. But he was too passionate and too vulnerable ever to be the cool and confident operator his brother was.
Jack Newfield
#15. I think Democrats made a mistake running away from liberalism. Liberalism, uh, Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, John and Robert Kennedy - that's what the Democratic party ought to reach for.
Theodore C. Sorensen
#16. Fortunately, President Kennedy and Robert Kennedy disagreed with the estimate and chose a course of action less ambitious and aggressive than recommended by their advisers.
David Kay
#17. He's not just the most powerful man in labor," Robert Kennedy had said in the wake of Hoffa's announcement; "he's the most powerful man in the country, next to the President.
Jimmy Hoffa
#18. A deep, black grief gripped Robert Kennedy in the months following his brother's assassination. He lost weight, fell into melancholy silences, wore his brother's clothes, smoked the cigars his brother had liked, and imitated his mannerisms.
Thurston Clarke
#19. I have learned by experience that a tragic end awaits anyone who dares cross swords with me; Nasser is no more, John and Robert Kennedy died at the hands of assassins, their brother Edward has been disgraced, Krushchev was toppled, the list is endless.
Mohammed Reza Pahlavi
#20. Kennedy saw the presidency as the vital center of government, and a president's primary goal as galvanizing commitments to constructive change. He aimed to move the country and the world toward a more peaceful future, not just through legislation but through inspiration.
Robert Dallek
#21. 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.
Robert Kennedy
#22. Always do what you're afraid to do-Robert F. Kennedy
Evan Thomas
#23. Like other Americans, I've reconciled myself to the idea that an animal's life has been sacrificed to bring me a meal of pork or chicken. However, industrial meat production - which subjects animals to a life of torture - has escalated the karmic costs beyond reconciliation.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
#24. 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
#25. 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
#26. 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.
Robert Kennedy
#27. One out of every six American women has so much mercury in her womb that her children are at risk for a grim inventory of diseases, including autism, blindness, mental retardation and heart, liver and kidney disease.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
#28. 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
#29. Wind has the potential to produce many, many more jobs per kilowatt hour than coal. But the coal industry has tremendous political clout on Capitol Hill because of its alliance with the railroads and coal-burning utilities.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
#30. Too much and too long, we seem to have surrendered community excellence and community values in the mere accumulation of material things.
Robert Kennedy
#31. 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.
Robert Kennedy
#32. It is from numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is shaped.
Robert Kennedy
#35. 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.
Robert Kennedy
#36. You show me a polluter, I'll show you a subsidy. I'll show you a fat cat using political clout to escape the discipline of the free market and force the public to pay his production costs.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
#37. Someone once said that World War Three would be fought with atomic weapons and the next war with sticks and stones.
Robert F. Kennedy
#38. 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.
Robert Kennedy
#39. That was the beginning of the Cuban missile crisis - a confrontation between the two giant atomic nations, the U.S. and the U.S.S.R., which brought the world to the abyss of nuclear destruction and the end of mankind. From
Robert F. Kennedy
#40. I think there is an obligation on the part of all of us to stay informed and aware.
Robert Kennedy
#41. 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
#42. For Robert the experience was another step in education. He was learning in particular that patriotic declarations did not make due process of law superfluous and that he owed a debt to his own inner standards.
Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.
#44. 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
#45. 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 Kennedy
#46. 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
#47. Lets dedicate ourselves to what the ancient greeks wrote so many years ago, to tame the savageness of man and make gentle the life of this world. Let us dedicate ourselves to that
Robert F. Kennedy
#48. Some men see the world as it is and say 'Why?' I see the world as it could be and say, 'Why not?'
Robert Kennedy
#49. Satellite communications connect television screens in Japan with television cameras in England, and the distance of half a world loses its meaning.
Robert Kennedy
#50. 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.
Robert F. Kennedy
#51. What polluters do is raise the standards of living for themselves, while lowering the quality of living for everybody else, and they do that by escaping the disciplines of the free market.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
#52. John F. Kennedy went to bed at 3:30 in the morning on November 9, 1960, uncertain whether he had defeated Richard Nixon for the presidency. He thought he had won, but six states hung in the balance, and after months of exhaustive campaigning, he was too tired to stay awake any longer.
Robert Dallek
#53. 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
#54. The sharpest criticism often goes hand in hand with the deepest idealism and love of country.
Robert F. Kennedy
#56. 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
#57. 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
#58. 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
#59. What happens to the country, to the world, depends on what we do with what others have left us.
Robert Kennedy
#61. 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.
Robert Kennedy
#62. 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
#63. 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.
Robert F. Kennedy
#64. This much is clear: violence breeds violence, repression brings retaliation, and only a cleansing of our whole society can remove this sickness from our soul.
Robert Kennedy
#66. 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
#67. 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
#68. 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
#69. Fear not the path of Truth for the lack of People walking on it.
Robert F. Kennedy
#70. 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
#71. There were no more heroes. Kennedy was dead, shot by an assassin in Dallas. Batman and Robin were dead... Superman was missing...
Robert Mayer
#72. Too often we honor swagger and bluster and wielders of force; too often we excuse those who are willing to build their own lives on the shattered dreams of others.
Robert F. Kennedy
#73. There are really only two stories the coal industry tells: "Coal keeps the lights on, and by implication, you'll live in medieval, soul-shattering darkness if you don't let us do whatever the hell we want with the landscape and drinking water you public health, because there's no alternative."
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
#74. 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.
Robert Kennedy
#75. Whats nice about my dating life is that I dont have to leave my house. All I have to do is read the paper: Im marrying Richard Gere, dating Daniel Day-Lewis, parading around with John F. Kennedy, Jr., and even Robert De Niro was in there for a day.
Julia Roberts
#76. It has been said that each generation must win its own struggle to be free. -Robert F. Kennedy
Naomi Wolf
#77. Ultimately, Communism must be defeated by progressive political programs which wipe out the poverty, misery, and discontent on which it thrives.
Robert Kennedy
#78. There is nothing wrong with corporations. Corporations are a good thing. But corporations should not be running our government. Corporations are good because they drive our economy, they encourage people to assemble wealth and to risk it and then create jobs.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
#80. I am not one of those who think that coming in second or third is winning.
Robert Kennedy
#81. We're not protecting the environment for the sake of the fishes and the birds. We're protecting it for our own sake ...
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
#82. 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.
Robert Kennedy
#83. We know more about Tom [Cruise] and Katie [Holmes] than we do about global warming. We're the most entertained, least informed people in the world.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
#84. 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.
Robert Kennedy
#85. In a true free market economy, you can't make yourself rich without enriching your community.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
#86. 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.
Robert Kennedy
#88. Strength with which President Kennedy dispatched his enemies" - a tribute couched in rather remarkable words: Johnson described Kennedy "when he looks you straight in the eye and puts that knife into you without flinching.
Robert A. Caro
#89. Whenever men take the law into their own hands, the loser is the law. And when the law loses, freedom languishes.
Robert Kennedy
#90. 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
#91. From the moment he took office in January of 1961, Kennedy had been eager to settle the Cuban problem without overt military action by the United States.
Robert Dallek
#93. 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
#94. One of the great creative statesmen of our age was Franklin Roosevelt. He was creative precisely because he preferred experiment to ideology.
Robert Kennedy
#95. 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
#96. To the extent that laws are founded on morality and on logic, they can lead men's hearts and minds.
Robert Kennedy
#97. 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 Kennedy
#98. Gary Hart is going to be all over the political spectrum fuzzing it up just like Jack Kennedy.
Robert Novak
#99. Corporate polluters, their phony think tanks and political toadies like to marginalize environmentalists as tree huggers, or radicals. But there is nothing radical about clean air or water.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
#100. All of us will ultimately be judged on the effort we have contributed to building a new world order.
Robert Kennedy
