The Wit and Wisdom of Ted Kennedy - Bill Adler [13]
—Speech, April 30, 1979
Dissent, like so many other things in the America of 1970, has become too comfortable. It takes five minutes to draw the letters on a protest sign, but it takes a lifetime of dedicated service to make a contribution to society.
—Distinguished Lecture Series,
Boston University, September 15, 1970
The person who serves as Attorney General must inspire the trust and respect of all Americans. Inscribed in stone over the center entrance to the Department of Justice is this phrase—“The Place of Justice Is a Hallowed Place.” All Americans deserve to have confidence that when the next Attorney General walks through the doors of Justice and into that hallowed place, he will be serving them too. On the basis of his record, tens of millions of Americans can have no such confidence. I therefore oppose this nomination.
—Judiciary Committee Executive Business
Meeting on the Confirmation of Senator
John Ashcroft for Attorney General,
January 30, 2001
America still has considerable work to do to improve the lives of our African American citizens. Civil rights is still the great unfinished business of our nation. But African Americans and all Americans are better off today because Martin Luther King challenged this country in the 1960s. As Dr. King said: Cowardice asks the question “Is it safe?” Expediency asks the question “Is it politic?” Vanity asks the question “Is it popular?” But conscience asks the question “Is it right?” And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe nor politic nor popular, but he must take it because conscience tells him it is right.
—Presentation of the 2000 Robert F. Kennedy
Human Rights Award, November 21, 2000
Jackie Robinson’s career and courage symbolize the inspiring words of our national anthem that he and the nation heard each time a baseball game was about to begin—“the land of the free, and the home of the brave.” But in those days, millions of Americans were not free, no matter how brave they were.
Jackie Robinson was a miracle worker who helped change all that. Athletically, he was in a class by himself. At UCLA in 1941, he became the first athlete in the history of the university—and to this day still the only one—to earn a letter in four sports in the same year. In 1949, his second year with the Dodgers, he was named the National League’s Most Valuable Player. And when his all-too-brief Major League career ended after 10 seasons, he was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame on the first ballot.
—Press Conference following the award
of the Congressional Gold Medal
to Jackie Robinson,
April 30, 2003
In an area where our founding fathers failed—the founding fathers wrote slavery into the Constitution—we fought a civil war, but it wasn’t really until we had Dr. King and Coretta Scott King in the ‘50s that awakened the conscience of the nation, so the political leadership of the early ‘60s could begin what I call the march to progress, that of knocking down walls of discrimination on race, religion, ethnicity and gender, and disability. And we have benefited so much from their leadership and from their inspiration.
—Response to an interview question
on “The Early Show,” CBS,
January 31, 2006
September 11th—that horrible and hateful day—has scorched our minds, our memories, and our hearts.
Our lives were forever changed. And in the days and the weeks since that hideous crime, our entire nation has continued to mourn the thousands of innocent victims of those cruel and heartless attacks.
We come together today in Boston to remember the friends and family members from our own state whose lives were cut short without reason or sense on that fateful day, and to offer comfort and our prayers to try to ease the pain of those left behind.
It is especially fitting that we gather here in Faneuil Hall, this magnificent landmark of liberty, which for two centuries has been the symbol of our nation’s freedom. This hallowed hall is a monument to those who dedicated their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor to the early struggles