Senate Quotes - Page 12

• It's a cliche that the Senate is broken, and like most cliches, it's true.

  George Packer

  Broken, Cliche

  "Transcript: George Packer on ‘The Empty Chamber’". Interview with Tom Casciato, www.pbs.org. October 29, 2010.

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• The filibuster is an affront to commonly understood democratic norms, but then so is the Senate.

  Hendrik Hertzberg

  Filibuster, Affront, Democratic

  "Ups and Downs" by Hendrik Hertzberg, www.newyorker.com. November 14, 2005.

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• Avoid taking a definite stand on great public issues either in the Senate or before the people. Bend your energies towards making friends of key men in all classes of voters.

  Quintus Tullius Cicero

  Men, Issues, Keys

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• We call on the Senate to reject any judicial nominee who does not affirm fundamental civil rights, including a woman's right [to obtain an abortion on demand]. The threat an [pro-life] judiciary poses to women's lives demands nothing less.

  Susana Martinez

  Rights, Pro Life, Abortion

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• George W. Bush, 43rd president of the United States, became the first incumbent president to increase his majority in both the Senate and the House and to increase his own vote (by over 3.5 million) since Franklin D. Roosevelt, political genius of the 20th century, in 1936.

  Peggy Noonan

  House, Political, President

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• Robert Torricelli, a powerful fund-raiser who helped raise more than $100 million for the Democratic party, took inappropriate gifts from a businessman, including an $8,000 gold Rolex watch, for which he was severely admonished by the Senate Ethics Committee in July. To recap: raising $100 million in contributions from gigantic corporations - ethical; taking a watch - unethical. That's the Senate Ethics Committee, an oxymoron since 1974.

  Jon Stewart

  Powerful, Party, July

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• Which of the following two groups contains the most former grand dragons of the Ku Klux Klan - the first 59 Tea Party people you run into this morning, or the U.S. Senate Democratic caucus?

  Howie Carr

  Running, Morning, Party

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• [C]lass consciousness is not one of our national diseases; we suffer, indeed, from its opposite-the delusion that class barriers are not real. That delusion reveals itself in many forms, some of them as beautiful as a glass eye. One is the Liberal doctrine that a prairie demagogue promoted to the United States Senate will instantly show all the sagacity of a Metternich ... another is the doctrine that a moronrun through a university and decorated with a Ph.D. will cease thereby to be a moron.

  H. L. Mencken

  Beautiful, Real, Eye

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• The argument of Alcidamas: Everyone honours the wise. Thus the Parians have honoured Archilochus, in spite of his bitter tongue; the Chians Homer, though he was not their countryman; the Mytilenaeans Sappho, though she was a woman; the Lacedaemonians actually made Chilon a member of their senate, though they are the least literary of men; the inhabitants of Lampsacus gave public burial to Anaxagoras, though he was an alien, and honour him even to this day.

  Aristotle

  Wise, Men, Tongue

  Aristotle, (2014). “Complete Works of Aristotle, Volume 2: The Revised Oxford Translation”, p.2228, Princeton University Press

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• All of us in the Senate live in an iron lung-the iron lung of politics, and it is no easy task to emerge from that rarified atmosphere in order to breathe the same fresh air our constituents breathe.

  John F. Kennedy

  Air, Order, Iron

  John F. Kennedy (1964). “Profiles In Courage”

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• The Senate is a body of old men charged with high duties and misdemeanors.

  Ambrose Bierce

  Men, Body, Congress

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• I was the only person of color in the Senate, and my colleagues were Strom Thurmond, Jesse Helms and Trent Lott.

  Carol Moseley Braun

  Color, Helm, Colleagues

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• People just want to hear some common sense... and I bring to bear the experience in local government and state government and national government - I was the first woman in history on the Senate Finance Committee - not to mention the diplomatic international experience.

  Carol Moseley Braun

  Government, People, Common Sense

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• If everybody is rewarded just for being alive, you get the same sort of effect as you do when you reward every student just for being enrolled. You destroy not only education, you destroy society by giving A's to everyone. This is a philosophical consideration that bothers me very much as I sit in the United States Senate and see the great budget allocations going through.

  S. I. Hayakawa

  Philosophical, Giving, Society

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• In order to judge of the form to be given to this institution the Senate, it will be proper to take a view of the ends to be served by it. These were,first, to protect the people against their rulers, secondly, to protect the people against the transient impressions into which they themselves might be led.

  James Madison

  Views, Order, People

  James Madison, Edward J. Larson, Michael P. Winship (2011). “The Constitutional Convention: A Narrative History from the Notes of James Madison”, p.86, Modern Library

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• When you have a Senate that is 50 Democrats and 49 Republicans and one independent, it's quite obvious that the only way we are going to get something done is if we work together.

  John Breaux

  Independent, Working Together, Done

  "Interview With John Breaux". "CNN Live Today" with Judy Woodruff, www.cnn.com. January 3, 2002.

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• There is only one thing I want to say about Ohio that has a political tinge, and that is that I think a mistake has been made of recent years in Ohio in failing to continue as our representatives the same people term after term. I do not need to tell a Washington audience, among whom there are certainly some who have been interested in legislation, that length of service in the House and in the Senate is what gives influence.

  William Howard Taft

  Mistake, Thinking, Ohio

  Speech before the Ohio Society, Washington, D.C. "Congressional Record", Volume 53, p. 8527, May 23, 1916.

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• Many agricultural counties are far more important in the life of the State than their population bears to the entire population of the State. It is for this reason that I have never been in favor of restricting their representation in our State Senate to a strictly population basis. It is the same reason that the founding fathers of our country gave balanced representation to the States of the Union, equal representation in one House and proportionate representation based upon population in the other.

  Earl Warren

  Country, Father, House

  The San Francisco Chronicle, p. 3, October 30, 1948.

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• My State Senate district was in the northern part of Oklahoma and they were redrawing the districts.

  Don Nickles

  Oklahoma, States

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• I think I can speak for every Senator, saying that he or she ran for the Senate because we want to help make this a better place; that is, we want to help our States and help America.

  Max Baucus

  Thinking, America, Want

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• President Obama came to visit me in the hospital. He said, 'I wish you were still in the Senate; I need your help.' I'm not certain I can help on everything. Maybe some things.

  Bob Dole

  Wish, President, Needs

  "Bob Dole: Great American" by Jeanne Marie Laskas, www.gq.com. June 25, 2012.

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• When a member of the House moves over to the Senate, he raises the IQ of both bodies.

  Everett Dirksen

  Moving, House, Body

  "Farrell: Channeling Everett Dirksen" by Vince Farrell, www.cnbc.com. August 6, 2009.

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• I understand the chairman of the Senate Ethics comittee is going to examine the check-bouncing scandal with a microscope. ...makes sense... If you're going to look at ethics in Congress, a microscope is what you need.

  Jay Leno

  Needs, Looks, Politics

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• I admired Eugene McCarthy’s courage and although I left his Senate staff after four years to accept a job as the researcher on the editorial page of the Washington Post, I remained an admirer.

  Kitty Kelley

  Jobs, Years, Four

  "Smudging a Senator’s Legacy" by Kitty Kelley, www.huffingtonpost.com. August 9, 2010.

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• I'm not running for state Senate because I wanted to become a politician. I'm running because I wanted to serve.

  Carl Lewis

  Running, Politician, States

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