Robert Kennedy

“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.”

“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.”

“Yesterday, we sought telescopes good enough to see all the planets. Today, we seek vehicles good enough to reach them.”

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

“I believe that, as long as there is plenty, poverty is evil.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“Ultimately, Communism must be defeated by progressive political programs which wipe out the poverty, misery, and discontent on which it thrives.”

“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.”

“Wars of any magnitude release powerful social and economic forces which can change the whole face of the world.”

“Martin Luther King dedicated his life to love and to justice between fellow human beings. He died in the cause of that effort.”

“At the time of the Civil War, there were six democracies in the face of the planet. Today, there's 120 and they've been inspired by the American exceptionalism.”

“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.”

“The hardest problems of all in law enforcement are those involving a conflict of law and local customs. History has recorded many occasions when the moral sense of a nation produced judicial decisions, such as the 1954 decision in Brown v. Board of Education, which required difficult local adjustments.”

“Elections remind us not only of the rights but the responsibilities of citizenship in a democracy.”

“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.”