“We must admit the vanity of our false distinctions among men and learn to find our own advancement in the search for the advancement of others.”
On the Mindless Menace of Violence (1968)
Context: Yet we know what we must do. It is to achieve true justice among our fellow citizens. The question is not what programs we should seek to enact. The question is whether we can find in our own midst and in our own hearts that leadership of humane purpose that will recognize the terrible truths of our existence. We must admit the vanity of our false distinctions among men and learn to find our own advancement in the search for the advancement of others. We must admit in ourselves that our own children's future cannot be built on the misfortunes of others. We must recognize that this short life can neither be ennobled or enriched by hatred or revenge.
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Robert F. Kennedy 72
American politician and brother of John F. Kennedy 1925–1968Related quotes
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Cosmos: A Personal Voyage (1990 Update), Encyclopedia Galactica [Episode 12]
Page 69.
Golden Booklet of the True Christian Life (1551)
“Tis hard if all is false that I advance,
A fool must now and then be right by chance.”
Source: Conversation (1782), Line 96.
This Business of Living (1935-1950)
"Self-Culture", an address in Boston (September 1838) http://www.americanunitarian.org/selfculture.htm
Context: I have insisted on our own activity as essential to our progress; but we were not made to live or advance alone. Society is as needful to us as air or food. A child doomed to utter loneliness, growing up without sight or sound of human beings, would not put forth equal power with many brutes; and a man, never brought into contact with minds superior to his own, will probably run one and the same dull round of thought and action to the end of llfe.
It is chiefly through books that we enjoy intercourse with superior minds, and these invaluable means of communication are in the reach of all. In the best books great men talk to us, give us their most precious thoughts, and pour their souls into ours. God be thanked for books. They are the voices of the distant and the dead, and make us heirs of the spiritual life of past ages. Books are true levelers. They give to all, who will faithfully use them, the society, the spiritual presence, of the best and greatest of our race.
“Thus must we toil in other men's extremes,
That know not how to remedy our own.”
Act III, sc. vi
The Spanish Tragedy (1592)
