Robert Kennedy Quotes

The gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages; the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials...it measures everything, in short, except that which makes life worthwhile.

~ Robert Kennedy

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

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.

~ Robert Kennedy

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.

~ Robert 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 Kennedy

I come from a family that has always emphasized and enjoyed sports - golf, tennis, football, baseball and the rest.

~ Robert 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 Kennedy

There were a lot of years that I was trying to do things that other people wanted me to do. But you have to follow your heart. Believe that you have a unique group of talents and abilities that are going to allow you to accomplish something in an area that interests you. Work at that and try to make some kind of contribution to your community.

~ Robert Kennedy

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

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 Kennedy

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

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

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.

~ Robert Kennedy

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

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

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

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

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.

~ Robert 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 Kennedy

Our landscapes connect us to our history; they are the source of our character as a peopl, as well as our health, our safety, and our prosperity. Natural resources enrich us economically, yes. But they also enrich us aesthetically and recreationally and culturally and spiritually.

~ Robert Kennedy

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

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

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

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?

~ Robert 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 Kennedy

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

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.

~ Robert Kennedy

Whenever men take the law into their own hands, the loser is the law. And when the law loses, freedom languishes.

~ Robert Kennedy

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

Tragedy is a tool for the living to gain wisdom, not a guide by which to live.

~ Robert 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 Kennedy

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.

~ Robert Kennedy

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

Some men see things as they are, and ask why. I dream of things that never were, and ask why not.

~ Robert 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 Kennedy

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

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

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

In my judgment, physical fitness is basic to all forms of excellence and to a strong, confident nation.

~ Robert Kennedy

Progress is a nice word. But change is its motivator. And change has its enemies.

~ Robert Kennedy