Contagious

[L]et no man think that he fights this battle for others; he fights for himself, and so do we all. The Golden Rule is not sentimentality, but the deepest practical wisdom. For the teaching of our time is that cruelty is contagious, and its disease knows no bounds of race or nation. Where men can be deprived because their skin is black, others may suffer because they believe that men should not be so deprived; and in the fullness of time others will be deprived because their skin is white. If men can suffer because they hold one belief, then others may suffer for the holding of other beliefs.

Freedom is not money, that I could enlarge mine by taking yours. Our liberty can grow only when the liberties of all our fellow men are secure; and he who would enslave others ends only by chaining himself, for chains have two ends, and he who holds the chain is as securely bound as he whom it holds. And as President Kennedy said at the Berlin Wall in 1963, "Freedom is indivisible, and when one man is enslaved, all are not free."

--Robert F. Kennedy (November 20, 1925 - June 6, 1968)
University of the Witwatersrand
Johannesburg, South Africa
June 8th, 1966