The Wit and Wisdom of Ted Kennedy - Bill Adler [5]
United States Senate,
March 14, 1962
This disaster reminds us that we are all part of the American family and we have a responsibility to help members of that family when they are in need.
—Speaking of Hurricane Katrina
at the presentation of the 2005
Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award
to Stephen Bradberry of New Orleans,
November, 2005
Historians of the future will wonder about the years we have just passed through. They will ask how it could be, a century after the Civil War, that black and white had not learned to live together in the promise of this land.
—Speech, January 26, 1976
When missiles were discovered in Cuba—missiles more threatening to us than anything Saddam [Hussein] has today’some in the highest councils of government urged an immediate and unilateral strike. Instead the United States took its case to the United Nations, won the endorsement of the Organization of American States, and brought along even our most skeptical allies. We imposed a blockade, demanded inspection, and insisted on the removal of the missiles.
When an earlier President outlined that choice to the American people and the world, he spoke of it in realistic terms—not with a sense that the first step would necessarily be the final step, but with a resolve that it must be tried.
As he said then, “Action is required … and these actions [now] may only be the beginning. We will not prematurely or unnecessarily risk the costs of … war—but neither will we shrink from that risk at any time it must be faced.”
In 2002, we too can and must be both resolute and measured. In that way, the United States prevailed without war in the greatest confrontation of the Cold War. Now, on Iraq, let us build international support, try the United Nations, and pursue disarmament before we turn to armed conflict.
—Remarks about the prospect of a
U.S. invasion of Iraq,
September 27, 2002
We face no more serious decision in our democracy than whether or not to go to war.
—Comment on the Bush Doctrine
of Pre-emptive War,
October 7, 2002
Just as the 20th Century was the century of the physical sciences, the 21st Century will be the century of the life sciences. In the last century, we developed the automobile, the computer, and the rocket ship. We unlocked the secrets of the smallest atomic particles and peered into the vastness of space.
This new century is still young, but it has already witnessed astonishing breakthroughs in medical research. Scientists have mapped the human genome—a task that once seemed inconceivable. Cracking the code of life will have profound implications for the treatment and prevention of disease. Treatments can be prescribed based on an individual’s genetic signature to prevent side effects. Diseases can be diagnosed and treated before symptoms appear.
—Speech at the Kennedy Library,
April 28, 2002
Our struggle is not with some monarch named George who inherited the crown—although it often seems that way.
—Comment about President George W. Bush
Every society is a mixture of stability and change, an irrevocable history and an uncertain future. We are both what we have been and what we desire to be. We are creatures of memory and hope, struggling with uncertainty as we try to fulfill the promises we know we must keep. Thus our society is in constant flux—different today from what it was yesterday—a continuation of the past, part of an organic process with roots deep in the history of our nations and of our common ancestors. Societies are like rivers, flowing from fixed and ancient sources through channels cut over the centuries—yet no man can ever step in the same water in which he stood only a moment ago.
—Address at the Bicentennial of Trinity College,
Dublin, Ireland,
March 3, 1970
It is not by accident that America over the years has been able to combine the wisdom of Athens and the might of Sparta. We have been a nation thrice blessed: blessed once with abundant natural resources; blessed a second time with a resourceful and stubborn citizenry; blessed a third time with a system of self-government