The Greatest Eulogy Ever

[Mtoto Wa Geti Kali]

I ask What If This Man Lived Now?

TAKE A MOMENT TO LISTEN TO THIS!!!

 

 

Here is the Eulogy read by Ted Kennedy@ the funeral of his brother Robert Francis Kennedy!

 

 

 

Your Eminences, Your Excellencies, Mr. President:

On behalf of Mrs. Kennedy, her children, the parents and sisters of Robert Kennedy, I want to

express what we feel to those who mourn with us today in this Cathedral and around the

world.

We loved him as a brother, and as a father, and as a son. From his parents, and from his

older brothers and sisters Joe

and Kathleen and Jack he

received an inspiration which he

passed on to all of us. He gave us strength in time of trouble, wisdom in time of uncertainty,

and sharing in time of happiness. He will always be by our side.

Love is not an easy feeling to put into words. Nor is loyalty, or trust, or joy. But he was all of these. He loved life completely and he lived it intensely.

A few years back, Robert Kennedy wrote some words about his own father which expresses

the way we in his family felt about him. He said of what his father meant to him, and I quote:

"What it really all adds up to is love not

love as it is described with such facility in popular magazines, but the kind of love that is affection and respect, order and encouragement, and support. Our awareness of this was an incalculable source of strength, and because real love is something unselfish and involves sacrifice and giving, we could not help but profit from it."

And he continued, "Beneath it all, he has tried to engender a social conscience. There were

wrongs which needed attention. There were people who were poor and needed help. And we

have a responsibility to them and to this country. Through no virtues and accomplishments of

our own, we have been fortunate enough to be born in the United States under the most

comfortable conditions. We, therefore, have a responsibility to others who are less well off."

That is what Robert Kennedy was given. What he leaves to us is what he said, what he did,

and what he stood for. A speech he made to the young people of South Africa on their Day of

Affirmation in 1966 sums it up the best, and I would like to read it now:

"There is discrimination in this world and slavery and slaughter and starvation. Governments

repress their people; millions are trapped in poverty while the nation grows rich and wealth is

lavished on armaments everywhere. These are differing evils, but they are the common works

of man. They reflect the imperfection of human justice, the inadequacy of human compassion,

our lack of sensibility towards the suffering of our fellows. But we can perhaps remember even

if only for a time that

those who live with us are our brothers; that they share with us the same short moment of life; that they seek as we do nothing but the chance to live out their lives in purpose and happiness, winning what satisfaction and fulfillment they can.

Surely, this bond of common faith, this bond of common goal, can begin to teach us

something. Surely, we can learn, at least, to look at those around us as fellow men. And

surely we can begin to work a little harder to bind up the wounds among us and to become in

our own hearts brothers and countrymen once again. The answer is to rely on youth not

a time of life but a state of mind, a temper of the will, a quality of imagination, a predominance

of courage over timidity, of the appetite for adventure over the love of ease. The cruelties and

obstacles of this swiftly changing planet will not yield to the obsolete dogmas and outworn

slogans. They cannot be moved by those who cling to a present that is already dying, who

prefer the illusion of security to the excitement and danger that come with even the most

peaceful progress.

It is a revolutionary world we live in, and this generation at home and around the world has

had thrust upon it a greater burden of responsibility than any generation that has ever lived.

Some believe there is nothing one man or one woman can do against the enormous array of

the world's ills. Yet many of the world's great 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; a young woman

reclaimed the territory of France; and it was a young Italian explorer who discovered the New

World, and the 32 yearold

Thomas Jefferson who claimed that "all men are created equal."

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. 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 that can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.

Few 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 for those who seek to change a world that

yields most painfully to change. And 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 globe.

For the fortunate among us, there is the temptation to follow the easy and familiar paths of personal ambition and financial success so grandly spread before those who enjoy the

privilege of education. But that is not the road history has marked out for us. Like it or not,

we live in times of danger and uncertainty. But they are also more open to the creative energy

of men than any other time in history. All of us will ultimately be judged, and as the years

pass we will surely judge ourselves on the effort we have contributed to building a new world

society and the extent to which our ideals and goals have shaped that event.

 

Our future may lie beyond our vision, but it is not completely beyond our control. It is the

shaping impulse of America that neither fate nor nature nor the irresistible tides of history,

but the work of our own hands, matched to reason and principle, that will determine our

destiny. There is pride in that, even arrogance, but there is also experience and truth. In any

event, it is the only way we can live."

That is the way he lived. That is what he leaves us.

My brother need not be idealized, or enlarged in death beyond what he was in life, to be

remembered simply as a good and decent man, who saw wrong and tried to right it, saw

suffering and tried to heal it, saw war and tried to stop it.

Those of us who loved him and who take him to his rest today, pray that what he was to us

and what he wished for others will some day come to pass for all the world.

As he said many times, in many parts of this nation, to those he touched and who sought to

touch him:

"Some men see things as they are and say why.

I dream things that never were and say why not."