Forty years ago, Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated while campaigning for the Democratic presidential nomination. I was 16 years old, had just become aware of politics, and his death (only two months after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.) was shocking. But rather than leading to disillusionment, both of their lives inspired me these past 40 years in the movement for peace and justice.

One of the first political books I remember reading was Kennedy’s “To Seek a Newer World,” published in paperback in April 1968. I re-read parts of it this week and was struck by how similar the situation is 40 years later, with a seemingly endless war and rising poverty. And as a new generation is taking its place in the politics of the country, his advice to my generation then is also true today. He warned of some dangers we would face.

First is the danger of futility, the belief that there is nothing one man or one woman can do against the enormous array of the world’s ills -- against misery and ignorance, injustice and violence. Yet many of the world's great movements of thought and action have flowed from the work of a single [individual] .... 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. …

The second danger is that of expediency, of those who say that hopes and beliefs must bend before immediate necessities. Of course, if we would act effectively, we must deal with the world as it is. We must get things done. But if there was one thing President Kennedy stood for that touched the most profound feelings of people across the world, it was the belief that idealism, high aspirations, and deep convictions are not incompatible with the most practical and efficient of programs – that there is no basic inconsistency between ideals and realistic possibilities, no separation between the deepest desires of heart and mind and the rational application of human effort to human problems. It is not realistic or hardheaded to solve problems and take action unguided by ultimate moral aims and values. It is thoughtless folly. …

A third danger is timidity. 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.

Robert F. Kennedy’s warnings against futility, expediency, and timidity were true then, and they are true now. As we seek the newer world we still desperately need, both my generation and today’s generation should remember them.

Duane Shank is senior policy adviser for Sojourners.