Robert Kennedy
You're happiest while you're making the greatest contribution.Collection: Inspirational
A life without criticism is not worth living.Collection: Criticism
Nations around the world look to us for the leadership not merely by strength of arms but by strength of our convictions.Collection: Looks
People are selfish. But they can also be compassionate and generous, and they care about the country. But not when they feel threatened. That’s why this is such a crucial time. We can go in either direction. But if we don’t make a choice soon, it will be too late to turn things around. I think people are willing to make the right choice. But they need leadership. They’re hungry for leadership.Collection: Country
Send forth a tiny ripple of hope.Collection: Tiny
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.Collection: Passion
I think we can end the divisions within the United States. What I think is quite clear is that we can work together in the last analysis. And that what has been going on with the United States over the period of that last three years, the divisions, the violence, the disenchantment with our society, the divisions - whether it's between blacks and whites, between the poor and the more affluent, or between age groups, or in the war in Vietnam - that we can work together. We are a great country, an unselfish country and a compassionate country. And I intend to make that my basis for running.Collection: Running
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.Collection: Mistake
The essential humanity of men can be protected and preserved only where government must answer, not just to the wealthy, not just to those of a particular religion, or a particular race, but to all its people.Collection: Men
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.Collection: Heart
And as long as America must choose, that long will there be a need and a place for the Democratic Party. We Democrats can run on our record but we cannot rest on it. We will win if we continue to take the initiative and if we carry the message of hope and action throughout the country. Alexander Smith once said, 'A man doesn't plant a tree for himself. He plants it for posterity.' Let us continue to plant, and our children shall reap the harvest. That is our destiny as Democrats.Collection: Running
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.Collection: Keys
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.Collection: Black And White
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.Collection: Men
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.Collection: Air
Some men see what is, and ask 'Why?' I see what might be, and ask 'Why Not?'Collection: Men
At the heart of that western freedom and democracy is the belief that the individual man...is the touchstone of value, and all society, all groups, and states, exist for that person's benefit. Therefore the enlargement of liberty for individual human beings must be the supreme goal and the abiding practice of any western society.Collection: Heart
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.Collection: Men
Industrial agriculture now accounts for over half of America's water pollution.Collection: Agriculture
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.Collection: Children
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.Collection: Taken
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.Collection: Pain
What happens to the country, to the world, depends on what we do with what others have left us.Collection: Country
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.Collection: Country
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.Collection: Passion
Punishment is not prevention. History offers cold comfort to those who think grievance and despair can be subdued by force.Collection: Thinking
...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.Collection: Children
GNP measures neither our courage, our wisdom neither our compassion. It measures everything except what makes life worthwhileCollection: Inspiring
Religion is a salve for confusion and misdirection.Collection: Confusion
Too much and too long, we seem to have surrendered community excellence and community values in the mere accumulation of material things.Collection: Long
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.Collection: Nature
The enlargement of liberty for individual human beings must be the supreme goal and abiding practice of any western society.Collection: Freedom
Your life can be anything you want it to be.Collection: Want
Don't get mad, get even.Collection: Inspiring
We develop the kind of citizens we deserve.Collection: Citizens
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.Collection: Running
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.Collection: Struggle
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.Collection: Art
I am not one of those who think that coming in second or third is winning.Collection: Winning
If freedom makes social progress possible, so social progress strengthens and enlarges freedom. The two are inseparable partners in the great adventure of humanity.Collection: Adventure
All of us will ultimately be judged on the effort we have contributed to building a new world order.Collection: World Government
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.Collection: Responsibility
I love this city. If I am elected, I'll move the White House to San Francisco. Everybody's so friendly.Collection: Moving
Killing one man is murder. Killing millions is a statisticCollection: Science
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.'Collection: Progress
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.Collection: Forever
Oh no, oh no... don't lift me, don't lift me.Collection: Last Words
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.Collection: Believe
Each generation makes it's own accounting to its children.Collection: Children