Robert F. Kennedy quotes - page 3
Ladies and Gentlemen, I'm only going to talk to you just for a minute or so this evening, because I have some very sad news for all of you, and, I think, sad news for all of our fellow citizens, and people who love peace all over the world; and that is that Martin Luther King was shot and was killed tonight in Memphis, Tennessee.
Robert F. Kennedy
First, is the danger of futility: the belief there is nothing one man or one woman can do against the enormous array of the world's ills - against misery, against ignorance, or injustice and violence. Yet many of the world's great movements, of thought and action, have flowed from the work of a single man.
Robert F. Kennedy
The cruelties and the obstacles of this swiftly changing planet will not yield to obsolete dogmas and outworn slogans. It cannot be moved by those who cling to a present which is already dying, who prefer the illusion of security to the excitement and danger which comes with even the most peaceful progress.
Robert F. Kennedy
Kennedy was not impressed by military objections. The Bay of Pigs had taught the President to distrust the Joint Chiefs of Staff. "The first advice I'm going to give my successor,” he once said to his journalist friend Ben Bradlee, "is to watch the generals and to avoid feeling that because they were military men their opinions on military matters were worth a damn.”4 During the missile crisis Kennedy courteously and consistently rejected the Joint Chiefs' bellicose recommendations. "These brass hats have one great advantage in their favor,” he said. "If we...do what they want us to do, none of us will be alive later to tell them that they were wrong.”5.
Robert F. Kennedy