A RIPPLE OF HOPE - RFK SPEECH 1966

 

 

Our answer is the world's hope;

it is to rely on youth.

This world demands the qualities of youth;

not a time of life but a state of mind,

a temper of the will,

a quality of the imagination,

a predominance of courage over timidity,

of the appetite for adventure over the love of ease.

It is a revolutionary world we live in,

and thus, as I have said in Latin America and Asia,

in Europe and in the United States,

it is young people who must take the lead.

Thus you, and your young compatriots everywhere,

have had thrust upon you

a greater burden of responsibility

than any generation that has ever lived.

 

First, is the danger of futility:

the belief there is nothing one man

or one woman can do

against the enormous array of the world's ills

against misery and ignorance, injustice and violence.

Yet many of the world's greatest movements,

of thought and action,

have flowed from the work of a single man.

A young monk began the Protestant Reformation,

a young general extended an empire

from Macedonia to the borders of the earth,

and a young woman reclaimed the territory of France.

It was a young Italian explorer

who discovered the New World,

and the thirty-two-year-old Thomas Jefferson

who proclaimed that all men are created equal.

 

"Give me a place to stand," said Archimedes,

"and I will move the world."

These men moved the world, and so can we all.

Few will have the greatness to bend history itself,

but each of us can work to change

a small portion of events,

and in the total of all those acts

will be written the history of this generation.

Thousands of Peace Corps volunteers

are making a difference in isolated villages

and city slums in dozens of countries.

Thousands of unknown men and women

in Europe resisted the occupation of the Nazis

and many died, but all added to the ultimate strength

and freedom of their countries.

 

It is from numberless diverse acts of courage

and belief that human history is shaped.

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.

 

"If Athens shall appear great to you," said Pericles,

"consider then that her glories

were purchased by valiant men,

and by men who learned their duty."

That is the source of all greatness in all societies,

and it is the key to progress in our time…

 

Robert F. Kennedy

University of Cape Town, South Africa

N.U.S.A.S. "Day of Affirmation" Speech June 6th, 1966

 

http://rfksafilm.org/html/speeches/unicape.php

Don't miss this conference for anything.

Wale Oyebade