[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1993, Book I)]
[June 6, 1993]
[Pages 814-815]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]



Remarks at the Memorial Mass for Robert F. Kennedy in Arlington, 
Virginia
June 6, 1993

    Father Creedon, Mrs. Kennedy, the children of Robert Kennedy, and 
the Kennedy family, to all the distinguished Americans here present, and 
most of all, to all of you who bear the noble title, citizen of this 
country: Twenty-five years ago today, on the eve of my college 
graduation, I cheered the victory of Robert Kennedy in the California 
primary and felt again that our country might face its problems openly, 
meet its challenges bravely, and go forward together. He dared us all. 
He dared the grieving not to retreat into despair. He dared the 
comfortable not to be complacent. He dared the doubting to keep going.
    As I looked around this crowd today and saw us all graced not only 
by the laughter of children but by the tears of those of us old enough 
to remember, it struck me again that the memory of Robert Kennedy is so 
powerful that in a profound way we are all in two places today. We are 
here and now, and we are there, then.
    For in Robert Kennedy we all invested our hopes and our dreams that 
somehow we might redeem the promise of the America we then feared we 
were losing, somehow we might call back the promise of President Kennedy 
and Martin Luther King and heal the divisions of Vietnam and the 
violence and pain in our own country. But I believe if Robert Kennedy 
were here today, he would dare us not to mourn his passing but to 
fulfill his promise and to be the people that he so badly wanted us all 
to be. He would dare us to leave yesterday and embrace tomorrow.
    We remember him, almost captured in freeze-frame, standing on the 
hood of a car, grasping at outreached hands, black and brown and white. 
His promise was that the hands which reached out to him might someday 
actually reach out to each other. And together, those hands could make 
America everything that it ought to be, a nation reunited with itself 
and rededicated to its best ideals.
    When his funeral train passed through the gritty cities of the 
Northeast, people from both sides of the tracks stood silent. He had 
earned their respect because he went to places most leaders never visit 
and listened to people most leaders never hear and spoke simple truth 
most leaders never speak.
    He spoke out against neglect, but he challenged the neglected to 
seize their own destiny. He wanted so badly for Government to act, but 
he did not trust bureaucracy. And he believed that Government had to do 
things with people, not for them. He knew we had to do things together 
or not at all. He spoke to the sons and daughters of immigrants and the 
sons and daughters of sharecroppers and told them all, ``As long as you 
stay apart from each other, you will never be what you ought to be.''
    He saw the world not in terms of right and left but right and wrong. 
And he taught us lessons that cannot be labeled except as powerful

[[Page 815]]

proof. Robert Kennedy reminded us that on any day, in any place, at any 
time, racism is wrong, exploitation is wrong, violence is wrong, 
anything that denies the simple humanity and potential of any man or 
woman is wrong.
    He touched children whose stomachs were swollen with hunger but 
whose eyes still sparkled with life. He marched with workers who 
strained their backs for poverty wages while harvesting our food. He 
walked down city streets with people who ached, not from work but from 
the lack of it. Then as now, his piercing eyes and urgent voice speak of 
the things we all like to think that we believe in.
    When he was alive, some said he was ruthless. Some said he wasn't a 
real liberal, and others claimed he was a real radical. If he were here 
today, I think he would laugh and say they were both right. But now as 
we see him more clearly, we understand he was a man who was very gentle 
to those who were most vulnerable, very tough in the standards he kept 
for himself, very old-fashioned in the virtues in which he believed, and 
a relentless searcher for change, for growth, for the potential of heart 
and mind that he sought in himself and he demanded of others.
    Robert Kennedy understood that the real purpose of leadership is to 
bring out the best in others. He believed the destiny of our Nation is 
the sum total of all the decisions that all of us make. He often said 
that one person can make a difference, and each of us must try.
    Some still believe we lost what is best about America when President 
Kennedy and Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy were killed. But I ask 
you to remember, my fellow Americans, that Robert Kennedy did not lose 
his faith when his own brother was killed. And when Martin Luther King 
was killed, he gave from his heart what was perhaps his finest speech. 
He lifted himself from despair time after time and went back to work.
    If you listen now you can hear with me his voice telling me and 
telling you and telling everyone here, ``We can do better.'' Today's 
troubles call us to do better. The legacy of Robert Kennedy is a stern 
rebuke to the cynicism, to the trivialization that grips so much of our 
public life today. What use is it in the face of the aching problems 
gripping millions of Americans, the American without a job, the American 
without health care, the American without a safe street to live on or a 
good school to send a child to? What use is it in the face of all the 
divisions that keep our country down and rob our children of their 
rightful future?
    Let us learn here once again the simple, powerful, beautiful lesson, 
the simple faith of Robert Kennedy: We can do better. Let us leave here 
no longer in two places, but once again in one only: in the here and 
now, with a commitment to tomorrow, the only part of our time that we 
can control. Let us embrace the memory of Robert Kennedy by living as he 
would have us to live. For the sake of his memory, of ourselves, and of 
all of our children and all those to come, let us believe again, we can 
do better.

Note: The President spoke at 8:13 p.m. at Arlington National Cemetery. 
In his remarks, he referred to Rev. Gerard Creedon, missionary to the 
Dominican Republic and celebrant of the Mass.