Top 100 Robert F. Kennedy Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “There are those that look at things the way they are, and ask why? I dream of things that never were, and ask why not?”

— Robert F. Kennedy

Featured in: Changing the World Quotes, Quotes About Dreams, Quotes About Hope, Imagination Quotes, Quotes About the World

2. “The purpose of life is to contribute in some way to making things better.”

— Robert F. Kennedy

Featured in: Meaning Quotes, Care Quotes, Make A Difference Quotes, Service Quotes, Quotes About Giving

3. “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.”

— Robert F. Kennedy

4. “Only those who have the courage to fail greatly achieve greatly.”

— Robert F. Kennedy

5. “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 F. Kennedy

6. “If you never quit, youll never fail.”

— Robert F. Kennedy

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

— Robert F. Kennedy

8. “Fear not the path of Truth for the lack of People walking on it.”

— Robert F. Kennedy

9. “Some men see the world as it is and say ‘Why?’ I see the world as it could be and say, ‘Why not?’”

— Robert F. Kennedy

10. “The future is not a gift: it is an achievement. Every generation helps make its own future. This is the essential challenge of the present.”

— Robert F. Kennedy

11. “In your hands lies the future of your world and the fulfilment of the best qualities of your own spirit.”

— Robert F. Kennedy

12. “The future does not belong to those who are content with today Rather, it will belong to those who can blend vision, reason, and courage in a personal commitment.”

— Robert F. Kennedy

13. “This much is clear: violence breeds violence, repression brings retaliation, and only a cleansing of our whole society can remove this sickness from our soul.”

— Robert F. Kennedy

14. “It is from numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is shaped.”

— Robert F. Kennedy

Featured in: Courage Quotes, Changing the World Quotes, Struggle Quotes, Quotes About Humanity, Hero Quotes

15. “Every time you stand up for an ideal, you send forth a tiny ripple of hope.”

— Robert F. Kennedy

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

— Robert F. Kennedy

17. “You’re happiest while you’re making the greatest contribution.”

— Robert F. Kennedy

18. “The future is not completely beyond our control. It is the work of our own hands.”

— Robert F. Kennedy

19. “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 the comfortable past which, in fact, never existed.”

— Robert F. Kennedy

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

— Robert F. Kennedy

21. “This world demands the qualities of youth; not a time of life but a state of mind, a temper of the will, a quality of the imagination, a predominance of courage over timidity, of the appetite for adventure over the life of ease.”

— Robert F. Kennedy

22. “Our attitude towards immigration reflects our faith in the American ideal. We have always believed it possible for men and women who start at the bottom to rise as far as the talent and energy allow. Neither race nor place of birth should affect their chances.”

— Robert F. Kennedy

23. “Too often we honor swagger and bluster and wielders of force; too often we excuse those who are willing to build their own lives on the shattered dreams of others.”

— Robert F. Kennedy

24. “Let us dedicate ourselves to what the Greeks wrote so many years ago: to tame the savageness of man and make gentle the life of this world.”

— Robert F. Kennedy

25. “Ultimately, America’s answer to the intolerant man is diversity, the very diversity which our heritage of religious freedom has inspired.”

— Robert F. Kennedy

26. “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.”

— Robert F. Kennedy

27. “What is objectionable, what is dangerous about extremists is not that they are extreme, but that they are intolerant. The evil is not what they say about their cause, but what they say about their opponents.”

— Robert F. Kennedy

28. “I’m tired of chasing people.”

— Robert F. Kennedy

29. “The greatest truth must be recognition that in every man, in every child is the potential for greatness.”

— Robert F. Kennedy

30. “We can master change not though force or fear, but only though the free work of an understanding mind, though an openness to new knowledge and fresh outlooks, which can only strengthen the most fragile and most powerful of human gifts: the gift of reason.”

— Robert F. Kennedy

31. “Moral courage is a rarer commodity than bravery in battle or great intelligence. Yet it is the one essential, vital quality for those who seek to change a world that yields most painfully to change.”

— Robert F. Kennedy

32. “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.”

— Robert F. Kennedy

33. “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.”

— Robert F. Kennedy

34. “Every society gets the kind of criminal it deserves. What is equally true is that every community gets the kind of law enforcement it insists on.”

— Robert F. Kennedy

35. “Every society gets the kind of criminal it deserves.”

— Robert F. Kennedy

36. “People say I am ruthless. I am not ruthless. And if I find the man who is calling me ruthless, I shall destroy him.”

— Robert F. Kennedy

37. “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.”

— Robert F. Kennedy

38. “Just because we cannot see clearly the end of the road, that is no reason for not setting out on the essential journey. On the contrary, great change dominates the world, and unless we move with change we will become its victims.”

— Robert F. Kennedy

39. “A life without criticism is not worth living.”

— Robert F. Kennedy

40. “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.”

— Robert F. Kennedy

41. “The sharpest criticism often goes hand in hand with the deepest idealism and love of country.”

— Robert F. Kennedy

42. “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.”

— Robert F. Kennedy

43. “Now I can go back to being ruthless again.”

— Robert F. Kennedy

44. “Industrial agriculture now accounts for over half of America’s water pollution.”

— Robert F. Kennedy

45. “All of us will ultimately be judged on the effort we have contributed to building a new world order.”

— Robert F. Kennedy

46. “I believe that, as long as there is plenty, poverty is evil. Government belongs wherever evil needs an adversary and there are people in distress.”

— Robert F. Kennedy

47. “Your life can be anything you want it to be.”

— Robert F. Kennedy

48. “GDP does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education, or the joy of their play.”

— Robert F. Kennedy

49. “Each generation makes it’s own accounting to its children.”

— Robert F. Kennedy

50. “The Gross National Product measures everything except that which makes life worthwhile.”

— Robert F. Kennedy