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About this quote

What does it mean?
The future must be actively built by each generation, not passively received.
In plain terms
You make the future yourself; it is not given to you.
What can you take from it?
Take responsibility for shaping the future through current actions.

Where it applies

  • policy making
  • community planning
  • youth empowerment

Putting it to work

  • long-term planning
  • civic engagement
  • education

Questions to consider

  • What future are you building today?
  • Who should shape the future?

Another view

Structural constraints can limit what a generation can achieve alone.

More from Robert Kennedy

  1. The future does not belong to those who are content with today, apathetic toward common problems and their fellow man alike, timid and fearful in the face of b…

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  2. The plight of the cities--their physical decay and human despair that pervades them--is the great internal problem of the American nation, a challenge which mu…

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  3. The free way of life proposes ends, but it does not prescribe means.

    Permalink to quote #68

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