If freedom makes social progress possible, so social progress strengthens and enlarges freedom. The two are inseparable partners in the great adventure of humanity.
Robert KennedyRead
Every society gets the kind of criminal it deserves. What is equally true is that every community gets the kind of law enforcement it insists on.
Interpretation
Society's values shape both its criminals and law enforcement.
This quote by Robert Kennedy suggests that the nature of crime and the effectiveness of law enforcement are reflective of the society that produces them. It implies that both the criminals who emerge and the laws that are enforced are a product of the collective attitudes and beliefs of the community, highlighting a mutual responsibility between citizens and their societal structures.
In practice
During a community meeting discussing crime rates, this quote can be used to emphasize the need for active citizen engagement.
If freedom makes social progress possible, so social progress strengthens and enlarges freedom. The two are inseparable partners in the great adventure of humanity.
Elections remind us not only of the rights but the responsibilities of citizenship in a democracy.
Within the United States, we have put great emphasis upon political freedoms. Because it has been our experience that these freedoms can lead to others.
It is one thing to open job opportunities. It is another to train people to fill them, or to persuade American enterprise to seek Negro as well as white applicants.
Our attitude towards immigration reflects our faith in the American ideal. We have always believed it possible for men and women who start at the bottom to rise as far as the talent and energy allow. Neither race nor place of birth should affect their chances.
The Gross National Product measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country. It measures everything, in short, except that which makes life worthwhile, and it can tell us everything about America - except whether we are proud to be Americans.
Do ask yourself why you, the individual, exist, and if you can get no other answer try for once to justify the meaning of your existence as it were a posteriori by setting before yourself an aim, a goal, a 'to this end', an exalted and noble 'to this end'.
No, God does not need us to love Him. But oh, how we need to love God! For what we love determines what we seek. What we seek determines what we think and do. What we think and do determines who we are - and who we will become.
In our loss and fear we craved the acts of religion, the ceremonies that allow us to admit our helplessness, our dependence on the great forces we do not understand.
Everything must be free to be written and published without restraint.
Every friend of freedom... must be as revolted as I am by the prospect of turning the United States into an armed camp, by the vision of jails filled with casual drug users and of an army of enforcers empowered to invade the liberty of citizens on slight evidence.
In a mouse we admire God's creation and craft work. The same may be said about flies.
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