Political Quotes

On the recordJune 6, 2018
Mr. President, today we remember Robert F. Kennedy, whose life was brutally, savagely cut short 50 years ago. Robert Kennedy was a Presidential candidate, a U.S. Senator, a Member of this Chamber, an Attorney General, a naval officer, a father, a son, a husband, and a brother, but more than all of that, he was a beacon of hope amidst turbulent and difficult times in our Nation, and he was an inspiration to generations of Americans. Speaking at his brother's funeral, our former colleague Senator Ted Kennedy said that Robert Kennedy ``need not be idealized, or enlarged in death beyond what he was in life; to be remembered simply as a good and decent man, who saw wrong and tried to right it, saw suffering and tried to heal it, saw war and tried to stop it.'' I was inspired by his efforts to right wrong, heal suffering, and stop war--inspired enough that when I became a U.S. Senator and was assigned an office that happened to be the former office of Robert F. Kennedy in the Russell Building, I proudly pointed out to visitors that here, in my office, once sat the great Robert Kennedy, who did in fact see wrong and tried to right it, suffering and tried to heal it, and war and tried to stop it. In May 1968, I was in sixth grade. I was an 11-year-old out in Oregon, and Bobby Kennedy, as we affectionately refer to him, was campaigning in my State. He was going very quickly from community to community, delivering speeches in one high school after another.…
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Jeff Merkley
Democratic · Oregon

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