Success Quote by Robert Kennedy

Kennedy’s line borrows the swagger of a locker-room mantra, then loads it with political consequence. “Dare” is the pivot: failure isn’t treated as an accident or a flaw, but as a chosen risk, an act of will. The sentence flatters courage while quietly redefining what counts as patriotism: not steadiness, not caution, but a readiness to be seen losing in public. That’s a useful message from a politician, because it reframes vulnerability as leadership rather than weakness.

The architecture is clean and evangelical: “Only those” draws a hard moral boundary, turning ambition into an ethical test. “Fail greatly” does double duty. It romanticizes scale - better a spectacular miss than a timid win - and it smuggles in the idea that small failures come from small aims. The repetition of “greatly” is a rhetorical drumbeat, a promise that the stakes are worth the bruises.

Context matters. In the 1960s, “great achievement” was not abstract self-help; it was civil rights, poverty, Vietnam, the unraveling of postwar consensus. Kennedy is selling a politics of experiment and confrontation at a moment when the country’s myths were cracking. The subtext is a defense against cynicism: if reform disappoints, don’t conclude it was foolish to try. Failure becomes evidence you reached for something real - and an argument to keep reaching, even when the crowd is waiting to say “told you so.”