RFK quotes

Today marks the 87th anniversary of the birth of Robert Francis Kennedy. Kennedy served as U.S. attorney general and U.S. senator. He was killed by an assassin's bullet about 45 years ago, as he celebrated an important win in his quest for the Democratic nomination for U.S. President.

Here is a collection of some of my favorite quotes from the very complex Kennedy.

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

"How do you tell if Lyndon [Johnson] is lying? If he wiggles his ears, that doesn't mean he's lying. If he raises his eyebrows, that doesn't mean he's lying. But when he moves his lips, he's lying."

"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."

"The advice 'bomb them back to the Stone Age' may show that the speaker is already there himself, but it could, if followed, force all of us to join him."

"Nations, like men, often march to the beat of different drummers, and the precise solutions of the United States can neither be dictated nor transplanted to others. What is important is that all nations must march toward a increasing freedom; toward justice for all; toward a society strong and flexible enough to meet the demands of all of its own people and a world of immense and dizzying change."

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

"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 which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance." 

- Robert F. Kennedy (1925-1968)