Robert Kennedy Quotes

The idea of equal rights was in the air.

The Great Society has arrived and the task of our generation is to bring it under control.

You can't find your way to social reform through the forces that made social reform necessary.

Do you know what social justice is? Do you know what social reform is? I didn't either, but reform and social justice are what I intend to do.

I am going to build the kind of nation that President Roosevelt hoped for, President Truman worked for and President Kennedy died for.

The people generally get accustomed to the established order of things and begin to tremble at the very idea of a change. It is this lethargical spirit that needs be replaced by the revolutionary spirit. Otherwise degeneration gains the upper hand and the whole humanity is led stray by the reactionary forces. Such a state of affairs leads to stagnation and paralysis in human progress. The spirit of Revolution should always permeate the soul of humanity, so that the reactionary forces may not accumulate to check its eternal onward march.

Perhaps our generation … will live to reflect … that our hard times were not in vain. They should make us more conscious of the conditions which we wish to eradicate.

Since the war [WWII], the world has been rushing forward at an unprecedented and exhilarating speed … Yet Britain lags behind, lacking the will or the plan which can bring this future within the reach of us all.

We would be in trouble as a society if there wasn't a constant pressure to make reforms and to be just.

I've seen anti-Semitism essentially disappear in my adult life as a social and economic factor. There may be some nuts out there, but generally things are fine. I think the same thing will happen with gayness. We'll get to a point soon enough where it's not even an issue anymore. But progress can be slow

That's why I want to change Mississippi. You don't run away from problems - you just face them.

Nelson Mandela understood that social transformation and economic transformation go hand in hand.

I am unapologetic about the need for social change, greater inclusion, and equity.

I feel like in 10 or 15 years' time our children are going to look back and say, 'What? You were around when gay people weren't allowed to get married?'

We accept the world in order to change it. If you do not accept, then what are you going to change?

If you scratch below the surface and ask what really makes me tick, it's the liberalism of trying to promote freedom and opportunity. Promoting social mobility is one of the keys to that.

I think that civil rights issues take a lot of time to develop.

I remember sitting there on my father's couch or my mother's couch, listening to this lecture about how there were two groups and we had to be separated. We've come a long way from this kind of open racism. And I think it's wonderful.

Civil rights happened because youth got involved. The youth stood up and helped to break the pattern that their parents had got accustomed to living. The next generation has to take that stand for whatever it is, socially, that they are involved in.

This is not the Chile we want to build.

I'm part of an important movement that needs to happen.

The consideration of change over the century is about loss, though I think that social change is gain rather than loss.

There are many things we do not want about the world. Let us not just mourn them. Let us change them.

All I want to do is change the world.

Our society cannot progress while our constitution stands still.