The Wit and Wisdom of Ted Kennedy (5 page)

There is still much to learn by walking in [Dr. Martin Luther King's] path. His views are still timely. Nearly 33 years have passed, but readers today would think they are seeing the work of the best of today's social commentators. His great speech touches on many specific issues that are especially important now, such as education, economic opportunity, community reinvestment, affordable housing and home ownership. He describes successful grassroots efforts that are still relevant models for today.

Most important, Dr. King reminds us that the effects of hundreds of years of slavery and segregation cannot be wiped away in a few years. The work goes on. Clearly, we've made remarkable progress since 1967, and all Americans owe Dr. King a tremendous debt of gratitude. But we are still fighting his fight for economic justice and full equality.

—Speech at Boston's 7th Annual Tribute
to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.,
January 17, 2000

Today, our souls ache for the loss of James and Jeremiah, and Joseph and Paul, and Timothy and Thomas'six good and decent men, strong men and magnificent public servants, who gave their lives unselfishly and courageously in the line of duty.

Every day, they accepted the peril of their jobs with unflinching hearts and unwavering spirits. They faced dangers on a daily basis that few of us can even imagine. Time and time again, they battled fires, rescued children, saved lives and returned to the firehouse with the quiet pride of knowing that they truly did make the difference. Now they have gone to God, and we gather here to celebrate their lives and mourn their loss.

In these agonizing days, we draw strength from the message of hope they left behind. On the honor roll of heroes, these six deserve the highest laurels. In our quest to teach our children about character, we can point to each of them—their sacrifice, their commitment, their faith, their willingness to brave the odds.

—Eulogy for the six Worcester,
MA firemen killed in the line of duty,
December 9, 1999

I entered public life with a young President [his brother, John F. Kennedy] who inspired a generation and the world. It gives me great hope that as I leave, another young President inspires another generation and once more on America's behalf inspires the entire world.

—Letter to President Obama, May 12, 2009

Last night the nation paused to pay tribute to Rosa Parks, whose life and dedication to equal opportunity for each and every American will be forever written in the heart and souls of the nation and in the pages of our history. The light that shone in the Capitol last night cast its beams across the country. The tears of the Parks family were the tears of a nation that will remain eternally in the debt to this great woman who became a profile in courage for our time and all time. When Rosa Parks sat down half a century ago, America stood up. Her quiet fight for equality sounded the bells of freedom for millions and awakened the moral conscience of the nation. We will always remember that great December, when Rosa Parks sat alone, so that others could sit together.

—Tribute to Rosa Parks, October 31, 2005

He [Ronald Reagan] was always a good friend and a gracious foe. He wanted to defeat his opponents, but not destroy them.

—Remarks about former President Reagan,
April 2007 (quoted on
Politico.com
)

Individual faults and frailties are no excuse to give in—and no exemption from the common obligation to give of ourselves.

—Ted Kennedy quotation
read by President Barack Obama
as part of his eulogy
delivered at the funeral mass,
August 29, 2009.

The strength of the family is our greatest national treasure.

—Speech, May 26, 1976

We do not need more study. We do not need more analysis. We do not need more rhetoric. What we need is more leadership and commitment.

—Speech, July 27, 1972

It does not take a constitutional amendment to reduce the federal deficit or balance the federal budget. All it takes is enough courage by Congress and the administration to make the tough decisions we're elected to make. If we're not willing to balance the budget, the Constitution can't do it for us.

—Statement opposing the Balanced Budget
Amendment, March 1, 1994

The challenges we face will require important changes in the structure of our institutions. It will not be easy to fit these changes into old categories, liberal or conservative, radical or reactionary. Instead, they will bring to our public life new meanings for old words in our political dialogue—words such as “power,” “community,” and “purpose.”

—Speech, May 14, 1978

If Democrats run for cover, if we become pale carbon copies of the opposition and try to act like Republicans, we will lose—and deserve to lose. … Democrats must be more than warmed-over Republicans. The last thing this country needs is two Republican parties.

—Speech at the National Press Club,
January 11, 1995, shortly before the swearing-in
of the new Congress under Republican control

The most troublesome questions confronting Americans do not have Republican answers or Democratic answers. … They have human answers, and American answers, for they are the questions that ask what kind of life we want to lead and what kind of nation we want to have.

—Commencement address,
Manhattanville College, June 12, 1970

This Administration has had its chance—and it failed the basic test of competence. It failed to deploy adequate focus in Iraq to win the peace. It failed at Abu Ghraib. It failed in granting sweetheart deals to Halliburton. It has failed the loss-of-confidence test, the basic test of Presidential leadership.

—Remarks on the Senate floor
on the Bush Administration's
multiple failures of leadership in Iraq,
September 10, 2004

Part of the larger challenge we face is that Congress is a crisis-oriented institution, with few mechanisms and little inclination to deal with problems before they become acute. … We need better distant early warning signals, better mechanisms and institutional arrangements for handling problems which are not yet brush fires, but which are already smoldering and may well cause the conflagrations of the future.

—Speech, April 30, 1979

Dissent, like so many other things in the America of 1970, has become too comfortable. It takes five minutes to draw the letters on a protest sign, but it takes a lifetime of dedicated service to make a contribution to society.

—Distinguished Lecture Series,
Boston University, September 15, 1970

The person who serves as Attorney General must inspire the trust and respect of all Americans. Inscribed in stone over the center entrance to the Department of Justice is this phrase—“The Place of Justice Is a Hallowed Place.” All Americans deserve to have confidence that when the next Attorney General walks through the doors of Justice and into that hallowed place, he will be serving them too. On the basis of his record, tens of millions of Americans can have no such confidence. I therefore oppose this nomination.

—Judiciary Committee Executive Business
Meeting on the Confirmation of Senator
John Ashcroft for Attorney General,
January 30, 2001

America still has considerable work to do to improve the lives of our African American citizens. Civil rights is still the great unfinished business of our nation. But African Americans and all Americans are better off today because Martin Luther King challenged this country in the 1960s. As Dr. King said: Cowardice asks the question “Is it safe?” Expediency asks the question “Is it politic?” Vanity asks the question “Is it popular?” But conscience asks the question “Is it right?” And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe nor politic nor popular, but he must take it because conscience tells him it is right.

—Presentation of the 2000 Robert F. Kennedy
Human Rights Award, November 21, 2000

Jackie Robinson's career and courage symbolize the inspiring words of our national anthem that he and the nation heard each time a baseball game was about to begin—“the land of the free, and the home of the brave.” But in those days, millions of Americans were not free, no matter how brave they were.

Jackie Robinson was a miracle worker who helped change all that. Athletically, he was in a class by himself. At UCLA in 1941, he became the first athlete in the history of the university—and to this day still the only one—to earn a letter in four sports in the same year. In 1949, his second year with the Dodgers, he was named the National League's Most Valuable Player. And when his all-too-brief Major League career ended after 10 seasons, he was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame on the first ballot.

—Press Conference following the award
of the Congressional Gold Medal
to Jackie Robinson,
April 30, 2003

In an area where our founding fathers failed—the founding fathers wrote slavery into the Constitution—we fought a civil war, but it wasn't really until we had Dr. King and Coretta Scott King in the ‘50s that awakened the conscience of the nation, so the political leadership of the early ‘60s could begin what I call the march to progress, that of knocking down walls of discrimination on race, religion, ethnicity and gender, and disability. And we have benefited so much from their leadership and from their inspiration.

—Response to an interview question
on “The Early Show,” CBS,
January 31, 2006

September 11th—that horrible and hateful day—has scorched our minds, our memories, and our hearts.

Our lives were forever changed. And in the days and the weeks since that hideous crime, our entire nation has continued to mourn the thousands of innocent victims of those cruel and heartless attacks.

We come together today in Boston to remember the friends and family members from our own state whose lives were cut short without reason or sense on that fateful day, and to offer comfort and our prayers to try to ease the pain of those left behind.

It is especially fitting that we gather here in Faneuil Hall, this magnificent landmark of liberty, which for two centuries has been the symbol of our nation's freedom. This hallowed hall is a monument to those who dedicated their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor to the early struggles for liberty and justice in this great land of America. The friends and loved ones we mourn today were able to pursue their own dreams and their own happiness because of that early hard-won freedom. And they themselves have become martyrs for liberty and justice in our own time.

—Massachusetts Memorial: A Celebration of Life,
Faneuil Hall, Boston,
November 16, 2001

In the aftermath of these shameful attacks, there is understandable anger across the nation. But it is wrong and irresponsible to jump to conclusions and make false accusations against Arabs and Muslims in our communities. Above all, we must guard against any acts of violence based on such bigotry. America's ideals are under attack too, and we must do all we can to uphold them at this difficult time.

—Remarks on September 13, 2001,
in support of U.S. Muslim and Arab
communities in the aftermath
of the September 11 terrorist attacks

I don't think you're going to be a success in anything if you think about losing, whether it's in sports or in politics.

—Quoted in
Sportswit
by Lee Green, 1984

ON THE KENNEDY FAMILY
AND ITS LEGACY

E
DWARD
M
OORE
K
ENNEDY WAS THE YOUNGEST OF NINE
children, born into a family already famous enough for the birth of their fourth son to merit not a small birth announcement in the local newspaper, but a full column-length news article in
each
of the two competing Boston dailies.

Throughout his 77 years he was constantly surrounded by family: He was father to three, stepfather to two, grandfather to four, and uncle to more than two dozen, including Bobby's eleven children and Jack's two children, all left fatherless by assassins and for whom he was an active father substitute. As he told
New York Times
reporter Fox Butterfield in an interview in October, 1992, “Thankfully, I've been inundated with children all my life.”

With a lifetime of being part of a large and celebrated family, one can either try to escape it and strike out alone, or embrace it wholeheartedly, seeking refuge and support from its numerous members. With Ted Kennedy the path was clear: His love and reliance on his family is something noted by all.

Yet one of the most significant moments of his life, that he identifies as such in his memoir,
True Compass
, ended with a recognition of distinctiveness from his family, of his longing for a chance to be just himself, not “a Kennedy.” He had just won reelection to the Senate in what turned out to be hard-fought campaign against Republican challenger Mitt Romney in 1994. In his victory speech that night he gave full credit to his family, who, as always, had rallied around him and campaigned hard on his behalf: “Well, this victory isn't really about me. It's about my family and about the people of Massachusetts and their residual goodwill that goes all the way back to Grandpa's day—” Suddenly, his wife Vicki interrupted with a truth that he needed to hear: “You know, Teddy, if you had lost, it would've been
you
that lost. It wouldn't have been your family …” So, she concluded, “
You
won! Not your family.
You.
”