Quote of the Day (Robert F. Kennedy, on a 'Tiny Ripple of Hope')

“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, “Speech at the University of Capetown, South Africa, Day of Affirmation,” June 6, 1966

(Forty years ago on this date, Robert Kennedy died from an assassin’s bullet that wounded him the night before right after his greatest political triumph. Forty years ago…but I am not resigned to the possibilities lost by his death. I remain angry enough that I refuse even to name the non-entity whose only claim to fame is that he took the life of a man far better than he could ever hope to be. For all Bobby’s complex, at times deeply imperfect personality, we remember him not for his manner of death but for his achievements in life, and for his inspiration to young people to, as he liked to quote from Tennyson, “seek a newer world.”

Seldom was that inspiration given more eloquent life than in Kennedy’s speech in South Africa two years to the day before his untimely death. As you read it, recall the context of the times—a West embattled not just with Communism, but with its own internal divisions over the evil legacies of class, imperialism and racism; an apartheid-ridden South Africa off the radar screen, as far as many Americans were concerned—until the former Attorney General of the United States identified with the struggles of the black majority in its worst hours. As for myself, even with the cynicism and resignation wrought by middle age, something within awakens once again—a hope in the face of the worst the world offers—as I ponder his words.)