Quotes & Philosophy

Today the U.S. marks 40 years since the assassination of Senator Robert F Kennedy, known as Bobby, as he campaigned for the Democratic presidential nomination.

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Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, who was Maryland's first female lieutenant governor, is still moved by the strangers who approach her to describe how her father inspired them. "Not a day goes by that someone doesn't come up to me and say they were affected by my father's legacy in some way," Townsend, now 56, said during an interview this week at a Lutherville coffee shop.

Forty years ago, Kennedy was leaving a victory celebration at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles when he was felled by an assassin's bullets. Kennedy had just won the California Democratic primary for president. He died on June 6, 1968 at age 42. His death shattered his family, people across the nation and a generation of young idealists who had looked to him with hope during a decade of great upheaval. Though shaken, many went on to follow his path. Today, notable Marylanders point to his legacy of social justice, integrity and courage as an enduring inspiration for their lives and deeds.  read more »

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CAMBRIDGE - Acclaimed author J.K. Rowling, whose boy wizard captured the interest of countless readers with the "Harry Potter" series, urged Harvard graduates yesterday to use their imaginations to create a better world. In an earnest, personal speech, the British author reminded students that their talents and opportunities carry "unique status and unique responsibilities," and challenged them to use their gifts for the greater good.

"That is your privilege and your burden," she said. "If you choose to use your status and influence to raise your voice on behalf of those who have no voice, if you choose to identify not only with the powerful, but with the powerless, if you retain the ability to imagine yourself into the lives of those who do not have your advantages, then it will not only be your proud families who celebrate your existence, but thousands and millions of people whose reality you have helped transform for the better." "We do not need magic to change the world," she continued. "We carry all the power we need inside ourselves already: We have the power to imagine better."

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"All nature has a feeling: woods, fields, brooks
Are life eternal: and in silence they
Speak happiness beyond the reach of books;
There's nothing mortal in them; their decay
Is the green life of change; to pass away
And come again in blooms revivified.
Its birth was heaven, eternal it its stay,
And with the sun and moon shall still abide
Beneath their day and night and heaven wide."

~ from poem All Nature Has A Feeling by John Clare

"Mine are the night and morning,
The pits of air, the gulf of space,
The sportive sun, the gibbous moon,
The innumerable days.

I hid in the solar glory,
I am dumb in the pealing song,
I rest on the pitch of the torrent,
In slumber I am strong.

No numbers have counted my tallies,
No tribes my house can fill,
I sit by the shining Fount of Life,
And pour the deluge still;

And ever by delicate powers
Gathering along the centuries
From race on race the rarest flowers,
My wreath shall nothing miss."

~ from poem Song Of Nature by Ralph Waldo Emerson