There are people in every time and every land who want to stop history in its tracks. They fear the future, mistrust the present, and invoke the security of the comfortable past which , in fact, never existed. (6-8-64)
About this quote
- What does it mean?
- People often try to stop history by clinging to a false, comfortable past while fearing the future.
- In plain terms
- Some try to stop progress by wanting a past that never really existed.
- What can you take from it?
- Resistance to change often relies on nostalgia for a false past.
Where it applies
Putting it to work
Questions to consider
- What past are people longing for?
- Is the future always better?
Another view
Sometimes past practices hold wisdom worth preserving.
More from Robert Kennedy
The sharpest criticism often goes hand in hand with the deepest idealism and love of country.
Permalink to quote #72 Together, we can make ourselves a nation that spends more on books than on bombs, more on hospitals than the terrible tools of war, more on decent houses than …
Permalink to quote #74 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…
Permalink to quote #71
Related quotes
While early American society was an agrarian society, it was fast becoming more commercial, and commercial goals made their way among its agricultural classes …
Richard HofstadterRichard Hofstadter quote #2 Even while I protest the assembly-line production of our food, our songs, our language, and eventually our souls, I know that it was a rare home that baked goo…
John SteinbeckJohn Steinbeck quote #50 There are people in every time and every land who want to stop history in its tracks. They fear the future, mistrust the present, and invoke the security of th…
Robert F. KennedyRobert F. Kennedy quote #73