EMAIL DETAILS

News and Press Donate
Now Host an
Event Online Museum
Store Advanced SearchJFK VISIT EXHIBITS
RESEARCH EDUCATION EVENTS & AWARDS ABOUT US
About Our CollectionsSearch the Digital ArchivesThe Ernest Hemingway
CollectionReady ReferenceSelected Milestones of the Kennedy
PresidencyNew York Times ChronologySelected Speeches of John F.
Kennedy John F. Kennedy QuotationsPress Conferences of President
KennedyLegislative SummaryResearch at the Kennedy Library
EmailPrintTwitterFacebookHome >Research >Ready Reference >Robert F.
Kennedy Speeches >Day of Affirmation Address (news release text version)
Day of Affirmation Address (news release text version)
Listen to the audio of this speech here.


Robert F. Kennedy
University of Capetown
Capetown, South Africa
June 6, 1966
(News Release Text)
I came here because of my deep interest and affection for a land
settled by the Dutch in the mid-seventeenth century, then taken over
by the British, and at last independent; a land in which the native
inhabitants were at first subdued, but relations with whom remain a
problem to this day; a land which defined itself on a hostile
frontier; a land which has tamed rich natural resources through the
energetic application of modern technology; a land which once imported
slaves, and now must struggle to wipe out the last traces of that
former bondage. I refer, of course, to the United States of America.
But I am glad to come here to South Africa. I am already enjoying my
visit. I am making an effort to meet and exchange views with people
from all walks of life, and all segments of South African opinion,
including those who represent the views of the government. Today I am
glad to meet with the National Union of South African Students. For a
decade, NUSAS has stood and worked for the principles of the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights - principles which embody the collective
hopes of men of good will all around the world.
Your work, at home and in international student affairs, has brought
great credit to yourselves and to your country. I know the National
Student Association in the United States feels a particularly close
relationship to NUSAS. And I wish to thank especially Mr. Ian
Robertson, who first extended this invitation on behalf of NUSAS, for
his kindness to me. It's too bad he can't be with us today.
This is a Day of Affirmation, a celebration of liberty. We stand here
in the name of freedom.
At the heart of that Western freedom and democracy is the belief that
the individual man, the child of God, is the touchstone of value, and
all society, groups, the state, exist for his benefit. Therefore the
enlargement of liberty for individual human beings must be the supreme
goal and the abiding practice of any Western society.
The first element of this individual liberty is the freedom of speech:
the right to express and communicate ideas, to set oneself apart from
the dumb beasts of field and forest; to recall governments to their
duties and obligations; above all, the right to affirm one's
membership and allegiance to the body politic - to society - to the
men with whom we share our land, our heritage, and our children's
future.
Hand in hand with freedom of speech goes the power to be heard, to
share in the decisions of government which shape men's lives.
Everything that makes man's life worthwhile - family, work, education,
a place to rear one's children and a place to rest one's head - all
this depends on decisions of government; all can be swept away by a
government which does not heed the demands of its people. Therefore,
the essential humanity of men can be protected and preserved only
where government must answer - not just to the wealthy, not just to
those of a particular religion, or a particular race, but to all its
people.
And even government by the consent of the governed, as in our own
Constitution, must be limited in its power to act against its people;
so that there may be no interference with the right to worship, or
with the security of the home; no arbitrary imposition of pains or
penalties by officials high or low; no restrictions on the freedom of
men to seek education or work or opportunity of any kind, so that each
man may become all he is capable of becoming.
These are the sacred rights of Western society. These were the
essential differences between us and Nazi Germany, as they were
between Athens and Persia.
They are the essence of our differences with communism today. I am
unalterably opposed to communism because it exalts the state over the
individual and the family, and because of the lack of freedom of
speech, of protest, of religion, and of the press, which is the
characteristic of totalitarian states. The way of opposition to
communism is not to imitate its dictatorship, but to enlarge
individual freedom, in our own countries and all over the globe. There
are those in every land who would label as Communist every threat to
their privilege. But as I have seen on my travels in all sections of
the world, reform is not communism. And the denial of freedom, in
whatever name, only strengthens the very communism it claims to oppose.
Many nations have set forth their own definitions and declarations of
these principles. And there have often been wide and tragic gaps
between promise and performance, ideal and reality. Yet the great
ideals have constantly recalled us to our duties. And - with painful
slowness - we have extended and enlarged the meaning and the practice
of freedom for all our people.
For two centuries, my own country has struggled to overcome the self-
imposed handicap of prejudice and discrimination based on nationality,
social class, or race - discrimination profoundly repugnant to the
theory and command of our Constitution. Even as my father grew up in
Boston, signs told him that No Irish Need Apply. Two generations later
President Kennedy became the first Catholic to head the nation; but
how many men of ability had, before 1961, been denied the opportunity
to contribute to the nation's progress because they were Catholic, or
of Irish extraction? How many sons of Italian or Jewish or Polish
parents slumbered in slums - untaught, unlearned, their potential lost
forever to the nation and human race? Even today, what price will we
pay before we have assured full opportunity to millions of Negro
Americans?
In the last five years we have done more to assure equality to our
Negro citizens, and to help the deprived both white and black, than in
the hundred years before. But much more remains to be done.
For there are millions of Negroes untrained for the simplest of jobs,
and thousands every day denied their full equal rights under the law;
and the violence of the disinherited, the insulted and injured, looms
over the streets of Harlem and Watts and South Side Chicago.
But a Negro American trains as an astronaut, one of mankind's first
explorers into outer space; another is the chief barrister of the
United States government, and dozens sit on the benches of court; and
another, Dr. Martin Luther King, is the second man of African descent
to win the Nobel Peace Prize for his nonviolent efforts for social
justice between races.
We have passed laws prohibiting discrimination in education, in
employment, in housing, but these laws alone cannot overcome the
heritage of centuries - of broken families and stunted children, and
poverty and degradation and pain.
So the road toward equality of freedom is not easy, and great cost and
danger march alongside us. We are committed to peaceful and nonviolent
change, and that is important for all to understand - though all
change is unsettling. Still, even in the turbulence of protest and
struggle is greater hope for the future, as men learn to claim and
achieve for themselves the rights formerly petitioned from others.
And most important of all, all the panoply of government power has
been committed to the goal of equality before the law, as we are now
committing ourselves to the achievement of equal opportunity in fact.
We must recognize the full human equality of all of our people before
God, before the law, and in the councils of government. We must do
this, not because it is economically advantageous, although it is; not
because of the laws of God command it, although they do; not because
people in other lands wish it so. We must do it for the single and
fundamental reason that it is the right thing to do.
We recognize that there are problems and obstacles before the
fulfillment of these ideals in the United States, as we recognize that
other nations, in Latin America and Asia and Africa, have their own
political, economic, and social problems, their unique barriers to the
elimination of injustices.
In some, there is concern that change will submerge the rights of a
minority, particularly where the minority is of a different race from
the majority. We in the United States believe in the protection of
minorities; we recognize the contributions they can make and the
leadership they can provide; and we do not believe that any people -
whether minority, majority, or individual human beings - are
"expendable" in the cause of theory or policy. We recognize also that
justice between men and nations is imperfect, and that humanity
sometimes progresses slowly.
All do not develop in the same manner, or at the same pace. Nations,
like men, often march to the beat of different drummers, and the
precise solutions of the United States can neither be dictated nor
transplanted to others. What is important is that all nations must
march toward increasing freedom; toward justice for all; toward a
society strong and flexible enough to meet the demands of all its own
people, and a world of immense and dizzying change.
In a few hours, the plane that brought me to this country crossed over
oceans and countries which have been a crucible of human history. In
minutes we traced the migration of men over thousands of years;
seconds, the briefest glimpse, and we passed battlefields on which
millions of men once struggled and died. We could see no national
boundaries, no vast gulfs or high walls dividing people from people;
only nature and the works of man - homes and factories and farms -
everywhere reflecting Man's common effort to enrich his life.
Everywhere new technology and communications bring men and nations
closer together, the concerns of one inevitably becoming the concerns
of all. And our new closeness is stripping away the false masks, the
illusion of difference which is at the root of injustice and hate and
war. Only earthbound man still clings to the dark and poisoning
superstition that his world is bounded by the nearest hill, his
universe ended at river shore, his common humanity enclosed in the
tight circle of those who share his town and views and the color of
his skin.
It is your job, the task of the young people of this world, to strip
the last remnants of that ancient, cruel belief from the civilization
of man.
Each nation has different obstacles and different goals, shaped by the
vagaries of history and of experience. Yet as I talk to young people
around the world I am impressed not by the diversity but by the
closeness of their goals, their desires and their concerns and their
hope for the future. There is discrimination in New York, the racial
inequality of apartheid in South Africa, and serfdom in the mountains
of Peru. People starve in the streets of India, a former Prime
Minister is summarily executed in the Congo, intellectuals go to jail
in Russia, and thousands are slaughtered in Indonesia; wealth is
lavished on armaments everywhere in the world. These are differing
evils; but they are the common works of man. They reflect the
imperfections of human justice, the inadequacy of human compassion,
the defectiveness of our sensibility toward the sufferings of our
fellows; they mark the limit of our ability to use knowledge for the
well-being of our fellow human beings throughout the world. And
therefore they call upon common qualities of conscience and
indignation, a shared determination to wipe away the unnecessary
sufferings of our fellow human beings at home and around the world.
It is these qualities which make of youth today the only true
international community. More than this I think that we could agree on
what kind of a world we would all want to build. it would be a world
of independent nations, moving toward international community, each of
which protected and respected the basic human freedoms. It would be a
world which demanded of each government that it accept its
responsibility to insure social justice. It would be a world of
constantly accelerating economic progress - not material welfare as an
end in itself, but as a means to liberate the capacity of every human
being to pursue his talents and to pursue his hopes. It would, in
short, be a world that we would be proud to have built.
Just to the north of here are lands of challenge and opportunity rich
in natural resources, land and minerals and people. Yet they are also
lands confronted by the greatest odds - overwhelming ignorance,
internal tensions and strife, and great obstacles of climate and
geography. Many of these nations, as colonies, were oppressed and
exploited. Yet they have not estranged themselves from the broad
traditions of the West; they are hoping and gambling their progress
and stability on the chance that we will meet our responsibilities to
help them overcome their poverty.
In the world we would like to build, South Africa could play an
outstanding role in that effort. This is without question a preeminent
repository of the wealth and knowledge and skill of the continent.
Here are the greater part of Africa's research scientists and steel
production, most of its reservoirs of coal and electric power. Many
South Africans have made major contributions to African technical
development and world science; the names of some are known wherever
men seek to eliminate the ravages of tropical diseases and pestilence.
In your faculties and councils, here in this very audience, are
hundreds and thousands of men who could transform the lives of
millions for all time to come.
But the help and the leadership of South Africa or the United States
cannot be accepted if we - within our own countries or in our
relations with others - deny individual integrity, human dignity, and
the common humanity of man. If we would lead outside our borders, if
we would help those who need our assistance, if we would meet our
responsibilities to mankind, we must first, all of us, demolish the
borders which history has erected between men within our own nations -
barriers of race and religion, social class and ignorance.
Our answer is the world's hope; it is to rely on youth. The cruelties
and obstacles of this swiftly changing planet will not yield to
obsolete dogmas and outworn slogans. It cannot be moved by those who
cling to a present which is already dying, who prefer the illusion of
security to the excitement and danger which comes with even the most
peaceful progress.
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.
"There is," said an Italian philosopher, "nothing more difficult to
take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its
success than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of
things." Yet this is the measure of the task of your generation, and
the road is strewn with many dangers.
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.
The second danger is that of expediency; of those who say that hopes
and beliefs must bend before immediate necessities. Of course, if we
would act effectively we must deal with the world as it is. We must
get things done. But if there was one thing President Kennedy stood
for that touched the most profound feelings of young people around the
world, it was the belief that idealism, high aspirations, and deep
convictions are not incompatible with the most practical and efficient
of programs - that there is no basic inconsistency between ideals and
realistic possibilities, no separation between the deepest desires of
heart and of mind and the rational application of human effort to
human problems. It is not realistic or hardheaded to solve problems
and take action unguided by ultimate moral aims and values, although
we all know some who claim that it is so. In my judgment, it is
thoughtless folly. For it ignores the realities of human faith and of
passion and of belief - forces ultimately more powerful than all of
the calculations of our economists or of our generals. Of course to
adhere to standards, to idealism, to vision in the face of immediate
dangers takes great courage and takes self-confidence. But we also
know that only those who dare to fail greatly, can ever achieve greatly.
It is this new idealism which is also, I believe, the common heritage
of a generation which has learned that while efficiency can lead to
the camps at Auschwitz, or the streets of Budapest, only the ideals of
humanity and love can climb the hills of the Acropolis.
A third danger is timidity. Few men are willing to brave the
disapproval of their fellows, the censure of their colleagues, the
wrath of their society. Moral courage is a rarer commodity than
bravery in battle or great intelligence. Yet it is the one essential,
vital quality of those who seek to change a world which yields most
painfully to change. Aristotle tells us that "At the Olympic games it
is not the finest and the strongest men who are crowned, but they who
enter the lists.... So too in the life of the honorable and the good
it is they who act rightly who win the prize." I believe that in this
generation those with the courage to enter the moral conflict will
find themselves with companions in every corner of the world.
For the fortunate among us, the fourth danger is comfort, the
temptation to follow the easy and familiar paths of personal ambition
and financial success so grandly spread before those who have the
privilege of education. But that is not the road history has marked
out for us. There is a Chinese curse which says "May he live in
interesting times." Like it or not we live in interesting times. They
are times of danger and uncertainty; but they are also more open to
the creative energy of men than any other time in history. And
everyone here will ultimately be judged - will ultimately judge
himself - on the effort he has contributed to building a new world
society and the extent to which his ideals and goals have shaped that
effort.
So we part, I to my country and you to remain. We are - if a man of
forty can claim that privilege - fellow members of the world's largest
younger generation. Each of us have our own work to do. I know at
times you must feel very alone with your problems and difficulties.
But I want to say how impressed I am with what you stand for and the
effort you are making; and I say this not just for myself, but for men
and women everywhere. And I hope you will often take heart from the
knowledge that you are joined with fellow young people in every land,
they struggling with their problems and you with yours, but all joined
in a common purpose; that, like the young people of my own country and
of every country I have visited, you are all in many ways more closely
united to the brothers of your time than to the older generations of
any of these nations; and that you are determined to build a better
future. President Kennedy was speaking to the young people of America,
but beyond them to young people everywhere, when he said that "the
energy, the faith, the devotion which we bring to this endeavor will
light our country and all who serve it - and the glow from that fire
can truly light the world."
And, he added, "With a good conscience our only sure reward, with
history the final judge of our deeds, let us go forth to lead the land
we love, asking His blessing and His help, but knowing that here on
earth God's work must truly be our own."
JOHN F. KENNEDY PRESIDENTIAL LIBRARY AND MUSEUM
Columbia Point, Boston MA 02125 (617) 514-1600Our PartnersSign up for
eNewsContact UsMuseum InformationFind us on: