Robert Kennedy Biography Quotes 21 Report mistakes

Early Life and Family
Robert Francis Kennedy was born in 1925 in Brookline, Massachusetts, into the large, politically ambitious Irish American family of Joseph P. Kennedy Sr. and Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy. His upbringing, shared with siblings including John F. Kennedy and Edward M. Ted Kennedy, was shaped by a demanding father and a devout mother who impressed upon the children a sense of duty and competition. The family lived for a time in London when Joseph Sr. served as U.S. ambassador to the United Kingdom, an experience that exposed Robert to international affairs at a young age. He grew up reserved but intense, known within the family for his loyalty and tenacity. In 1950 he married Ethel Skakel; they would raise a large family together, and he remained closely attached to his brothers and sisters throughout his life.

Education, War Service, and Early Career
Kennedy attended Harvard University, where he played football and matured into a serious student after wartime service in the U.S. Navy during World War II. He completed his legal training at the University of Virginia School of Law and was admitted to the bar. Early in his career, he worked in Washington as a congressional staff attorney, briefly associated with the Senate investigations of subversion before moving to the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. There he developed a reputation as a dogged counsel in organized-crime inquiries, working under Senator John McClellan and clashing with Teamsters leader James R. Hoffa. His methodical, relentless questioning and a strong sense of personal ethics made him a formidable figure well before he held elective office. In 1948 he had traveled to the Middle East as a young reporter, sharpening his interest in foreign affairs.

Attorney General and Counselor to the President
When John F. Kennedy won the presidency in 1960, Robert Kennedy became Attorney General of the United States, one of the youngest in the nation's history. He transformed the Department of Justice into a much more activist institution, building a strike force against organized crime and coordinating with Deputy Attorney General Byron White and later Nicholas Katzenbach. He pushed for civil rights enforcement, sending federal marshals to protect Freedom Riders and deploying federal authority during the integration crises at the University of Mississippi with James Meredith and at the University of Alabama, where Governor George Wallace attempted to block entry.

His relationship with FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover was strained. Kennedy pressed the Bureau to pursue civil rights cases and organized-crime prosecutions, even as he approved controversial wiretaps of Martin Luther King Jr. at Hoover's urging, a decision that he and many others later regarded critically. Inside the Kennedy administration he became his brother's closest adviser on matters of national security. During the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, he served as a key member of the Executive Committee, helped shape the naval quarantine strategy, and maintained crucial backchannel communications with Soviet representatives, aiming to avoid war while insisting on the removal of Soviet missiles from Cuba.

After Dallas and the Senate
The assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963 devastated Robert Kennedy. He left the Department of Justice in 1964 and sought election to the U.S. Senate from New York. Winning the seat, he recast his public image: the hard-edged prosecutor became a figure associated with empathy and advocacy for those left out of American prosperity. He traveled to Appalachia and the Mississippi Delta, visited urban neighborhoods in New York such as Bedford-Stuyvesant, and listened to farmworkers in California, supporting Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers during their grape strike and Chavez's 1968 fast. He spoke frequently about poverty, racial injustice, and youth opportunity, while backing immigration reform and fair housing efforts.

Kennedy's Senate years also marked a deepening engagement with the world. In 1966 he toured South Africa, delivering the Day of Affirmation address in Cape Town that introduced the phrase ripple of hope and challenged the apartheid regime. He used committee work and public hearings to argue that American power should serve moral ends. On Vietnam, he initially deferred to President Lyndon B. Johnson but grew increasingly critical as the war escalated, questioning both its strategy and its human costs. His relationship with Johnson was fraught, shaped by political rivalry and grief over his brother's legacy, and they parted on key policies.

1968 Campaign
In March 1968, amid national turmoil after the Tet Offensive and rising domestic dissent, Kennedy announced his candidacy for the Democratic presidential nomination, entering a race in which Senator Eugene McCarthy had already surprised Johnson with strong showings. Shortly thereafter, Johnson chose not to seek reelection, and Vice President Hubert Humphrey emerged as a contender. Kennedy built a coalition that crossed boundaries of race, class, and region. He connected with communities often distant from politics: Black and Latino voters in cities, working-class whites, Native Americans, and young people disenchanted with the war and searching for a more inclusive vision of America.

After the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. in April 1968, Kennedy delivered an extemporaneous plea for reconciliation and nonviolence in Indianapolis, invoking classical literature and his own family's suffering. The speech captured his ability to appeal to conscience and empathy in moments of crisis. As the primaries unfolded, he won key contests, including Indiana and, on June 4, California, positioning himself as a formidable challenger for the nomination.

Assassination and Aftermath
Just after midnight on June 5, 1968, moments after claiming victory in California at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, Robert Kennedy was shot by Sirhan Sirhan. He died the following day. His funeral in New York and the slow funeral train to Washington drew crowds along the tracks from city and countryside alike, a spontaneous expression of mourning reminiscent of the reaction to his brother's death. He was buried at Arlington National Cemetery near President John F. Kennedy, a testament to the intertwined nature of their public lives.

Legacy
Robert F. Kennedy's legacy rests on his evolution and his moral claims on public life. He began as a combative investigator and campaign manager and became a national leader who argued that government should serve justice, expand opportunity, and recognize the dignity of the poor. The people around him shaped that journey: Ethel Kennedy sustained his family and public commitments; John F. Kennedy gave him a proving ground and a mission; allies like Nicholas Katzenbach and Byron White helped turn his priorities into action; adversaries such as J. Edgar Hoover and James Hoffa tested his resolve; figures like Martin Luther King Jr. and Cesar Chavez broadened his understanding of nonviolence and economic rights; and political rivals Lyndon B. Johnson, Hubert Humphrey, and Eugene McCarthy defined the contested terrain of the Democratic Party in the 1960s.

He left behind children, including Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Kerry Kennedy, and Rory Kennedy, and a generation of Americans who associated his name with empathy, courage, and a call to bridge divides. Though his life was cut short in 1968, his words and actions continued to influence debates over civil rights, poverty, and war. In communities he visited and in the memories of those who worked with him, Robert Kennedy remained an emblem of the conviction that politics, at its best, can be an instrument of mercy as well as power.

Our collection contains 21 quotes who is written by Robert, under the main topics: Motivational - Wisdom - Justice - Leadership - Overcoming Obstacles.

Other people realated to Robert: Dean Rusk (Diplomat), Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. (Historian), Victoria Pratt (Actress), Ronald Steel (Writer), Mary McGrory (Journalist), Evan Thomas (Writer)