Robert Kennedy
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?Collection: Anger
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.Collection: Attitude
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.Collection: Leadership
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.Collection: Leadership
I come from a family that has always emphasized and enjoyed sports - golf, tennis, football, baseball and the rest.Collection: Family
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.Collection: Future
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.Collection: Society
From the first moment of independence, the United States has been dedicated to innovation as a way of government and a way of life.Collection: Independence
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.Collection: Government
In the final analysis, poverty is a condition of helplessness - of inability to cope with the conditions of existence in our complex society.Collection: Society
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.Collection: Peace
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.Collection: Future
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.Collection: Freedom
Freedom possesses many meanings. It speaks not merely in terms of political and religious liberty but also in terms of economic and social progress.Collection: Freedom
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.Collection: Freedom
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.Collection: Freedom
President Kennedy's election was such an enlargement. It expanded religious freedom to include the highest office in the land. President Kennedy's administration was such an enlargement. It advanced the day when the bars of intolerance against all minority groups will be lifted, not only for the presidency, but for all aspects of our national life.Collection: Freedom
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.Collection: History
Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly.Collection: Great
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.Collection: Men
The Gross National Product measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country. It measures everything, in short, except that which makes life worthwhile, and it can tell us everything about America - except whether we are proud to be Americans.Collection: Wisdom
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?Collection: God
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, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current that can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.Collection: Hope
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.Collection: Car
If any man claims the Negro should be content... let him say he would willingly change the color of his skin and go to live in the Negro section of a large city. Then and only then has he a right to such a claim.Collection: Change
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.Collection: Women
The leaders of the world face no greater task than that of avoiding nuclear war. While preserving the cause of freedom, we must seek abolition of war through programs of general and complete disarmament. The Test-Ban Treaty of 1963 represents a significant beginning in this immense undertaking.Collection: Freedom
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.Collection: Society
Ultimately, America's answer to the intolerant man is diversity, the very diversity which our heritage of religious freedom has inspired.Collection: Freedom
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.Collection: Men
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?Collection: Chance
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.Collection: Family
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.Collection: Society
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.Collection: Health
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.Collection: Respect
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.Collection: Science
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.Collection: History
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.Collection: Relationship
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.Collection: Sports
Whenever men take the law into their own hands, the loser is the law. And when the law loses, freedom languishes.Collection: Politics
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.Collection: History
The history of antitrust law enforcement shows that successful antitrust prosecutions have often strengthened and brought vitality to extremely large companies and businesses.Collection: History
One-fifth of the people are against everything all the time.Collection: Time
In my judgment, physical fitness is basic to all forms of excellence and to a strong, confident nation.Collection: Fitness
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.Collection: Women
One of the great creative statesmen of our age was Franklin Roosevelt. He was creative precisely because he preferred experiment to ideology.Collection: Age
Tragedy is a tool for the living to gain wisdom, not a guide by which to live.Collection: Wisdom
In the long run, a flexible sentencing procedure which works to rehabilitate offenders offers the best hope in the majority of cases in the Federal courts.Collection: Hope
America's answer to the intolerant man is diversity - the very diversity which our heritage of religious freedom has inspired.Collection: Freedom
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.Collection: Politics