Senate Quotes - page 19
If Kennedy is sincere - if his chief concern is that Massachusetts not be left for months without the services of a full-time senator - then he should do the right thing right now: He should resign. For well over a year, Massachusetts has not had the "two voices...and two votes in the Senate'' that Kennedy says its voters are entitled to. Sickness has kept him away from Capitol Hill for most of the last 15 months. He has missed all but a handful of the 270 roll-calls taken in the Senate so far this year. Through no fault of his own, he is unable to carry out the job he was reelected to in 2006. As a matter of integrity, he should bow out and allow his constituents to choose a replacement.
Ted Kennedy
It is true. We are all part of a continuum. In the history of our Nation, only 1,864 Americans have ever served in the Senate. Carved or penned into the drawers in our desks are the names of some of the giants--men such as Clay, Webster, Calhoun. But we don't have to open our desks or open a book to see one of the greatest Senators ever to serve in this body. All we have to do is open our eyes. He is right here, at the same desk he has occupied now for the last 40 years. I have been a Senator for 16 years. I count it as part of my good fortune that I have been able to call Ted Kennedy a colleague all of those years. I consider it an even greater privilege to call him my friend. Today it gives me enormous pleasure to join the rest of my colleagues in wishing my good friend a happy 70th birthday.
Ted Kennedy
We did manage to forge partnerships on key legislation, such as the Ryan White AIDS Care Act, State Children's Health Insurance Program, and most recently, the Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act. Ted was a lion among liberals, but he was also a constructive and shrewd lawmaker. He never lost sight of the big picture and was willing to compromise on certain provisions in order to move forward on issues he believed important. And, perhaps most importantly, he always kept his word. When our carefully balanced compromise legislation came to the Senate floor, Ted often had to lead the opposition to amendments offered by Democratic colleagues that he would rather have supported. But, he took the integrity of our agreement seriously and protected the negotiated package.
Ted Kennedy
Six years ago, when John McCain, the Arizona senator, last worked on an immigration bill, his partner was Ted Kennedy, of Massachusetts. Kennedy, especially in his final decade in the Senate, was known for working closely with ideological opponents to pass major pieces of legislation. On a recent morning, McCain sat in his dimly lit office, across the street from the Senate, and said how much he missed Kennedy.
Ted Kennedy
I was very sorry to hear that Senator Kennedy has taken ill, and like millions of Americans, Cindy and I anxiously await word of his condition. Senator Kennedy's role in the U.S. Senate cannot be overstated. He is a legendary lawmaker, and I have the highest respect for him. When we have worked together, he has been a skillful, fair and generous partner. I consider it a great privilege to call him my friend. Cindy and I are praying for our friend, his wife, Vicki and the Kennedy family.
Ted Kennedy
But their legacies are as alive as ever, together right here in Boston. The John F. Kennedy Library next door is a symbol of our American idealism; the Edward M. Kennedy Institute for the United States Senate as a living example of the hard, frustrating, never-ending, but critical work required to make that idealism real. What more fitting tribute, what better testament to the life of Ted Kennedy, than this place that he left for a new generation of Americans: a monument not to himself, but to what we, the people, have the power to do together.
Ted Kennedy
Edward M. Kennedy, despite his long career in the U.S. Senate, is still often known as Teddy, the diminutive attached to him as the youngest brother in his powerful family. The nickname persists because he was blessed and cursed by the gift of years that let him lead a full and well-publicized life that could only diminish him against the gargantuan mythology grown up around his murdered brothers John and Robert.
Ted Kennedy
I know what he's capable of - he's capable of bigness that we didn't see that in general election campaign that was run. I would hope that's the path that he goes down. His political epitaph is going to be dictated by how he conducts himself in next six or 13 years. Will he be seen as a giant of the Senate who came back from a presidential loss like Scoop Jackson, Robert Taft or Ted Kennedy, or will he go down a different path? Only he can decide it.
Ted Kennedy
![Unless I get something real good for [Senate Candidate 1], shit, I'll just fuck myself, you know what I'm saying. (Rod Blagojevich)](https://cdn.quotesdtb.com/img/quotes_images_webp/84/rod-blagojevich-candidate-good-971884.webp)
Do you remember that there was going to be a study released by the Senate, that the senator from Iowa or from Kansas who was the Republican head of the Senate Intelligence Committee was going to do this study to determine whether the administration had, in fact, misused the intelligence information to mislead us into the war with Iraq? Well, I've never seen that study. I'd like to know where that study is. I'd like to know why we've spent three years investigating Scooter Libby, when we should have been investigating why this country went to war in Iraq.
Wesley Clark
Several of these conservative Justices, who are in no way accountable to the American people, have lied to the U.S. Senate, ripped up the Constitution and defiled both precedent and the Supreme Court's reputation - all at the expense of tens of millions of women who could soon be stripped of their bodily autonomy and the constitutional rights they've relied on for half a century.
Nancy Pelosi
The Senate has unlimited debate; in the House, debate is ruthlessly circumscribed. There is frequent discussion as to which technique most effectively frustrates democratic process. However, a more important antidote to American democracy is American gerontocracy. The positions of eminence and authority in Congress are allotted in accordance with length of service, regardless of quality. Superficial observers have long criticized the United States for making a fetish of youth. This is unfair. Uniquely among modern organs of public and private administration, its national legislature rewards senility.
John Kenneth Galbraith
I think that the fun of telling stories in this galaxy is that you get to take things that are familiar and you get to adjust them, augment them, comment on them, continue them. It's a world that is looking to be expanded. I mean, the original movies did the most remarkable thing in referencing the Clone Wars and the Empire and the Senate, and the Old Wars, and never showing any of these things. But the painting that was created of this past canvas, it's incredible how intimate it was. But you always felt that there was a peripheral life and history and world beyond what you were seeing.
J. J. Abrams
Caligula then reintroduced treason as a capital crime, ordered his speech to be at once engraved on a bronze tablet and posted on the wall of the House [where the Senate assembled for legislative and administrative work] above the seats of the Consuls, and rushed away. No more business was transacted that day; we were all too dejected. But the next day we lavished praise on Caligula as a sincere and pious ruler and voted annual sacrifices to his Clemency. What else could we do? He had the army at his back, and power of life or death over us, and until someone was bold and clever enough to make a successful conspiracy against his life all that we could do was to humor him and hope for the best.
Robert Graves
It makes a big difference whether you give something back or pay it off...
The framers of the laws instituted festivals, in order that men should be publicly compelled to gaiety, as a necessary temperance for labors; We remember the great orator Pollio Asinius, who was not detained by anything beyond the tenth hour: he did not even need letters for an hour after that, so that no new concern arose, but he put the fatigue of the whole day in those two hours. Some joined in the middle of the day and put off some lighter work in the afternoon hours. Our elders also forbade a new report to be made in the senate after ten o'clock. The army divided the vigils, and the night was safe from the return of the expedition.
Seneca
More than 900 Harvard Law School affiliates signed a statement denouncing Sen. Ted Cruz - a Republican from Texas who graduated from the Law School in 1995 - for contesting the results of the recent presidential election.
In the months since President-elect Joe R. Biden defeated President Donald J. Trump, the Justice Department discovered no instances of widespread voter fraud. Nonetheless, Trump and his allies have continued to falsely claim that he won the election, including in dozens of failed lawsuits.
On Jan. 2, Cruz and 10 other Senate Republicans announced their intent to object to the certification of some votes in the Electoral College, calling for an "emergency 10-day audit of the election returns in the disputed states.”
The Law School statement condemns Cruz for the objection, stating that his "false claims of voter fraud” and his choice to contest votes are "utterly inconsistent” with his oath of office.
Ted Cruz
I have a greater appreciation for how change actually happens. If something could change with the flip of a switch, it would have been done before. By the same token, there's always going to be a bit of a disconnect. Whether you're a Democrat or a Republican, if you're under 35, you're for marriage equality, you want to raise the debt ceiling, and you want better access to health care and entrepreneurship. But the average age in the senate is 62 or 63. Like most people who turn on the news, I think, OK, the members of congress are out of touch.
Kal Penn
To young people out there, young people of color, young immigrants, this is a great state, but one thing I can say without any doubt, you can be an African American and go to the Senate but you just have to share our values. If you're a young, African American or an immigrant, you can go anywhere in this state, you just need to be conservative, not liberal. Graham debating Jamie Harrison in Columbia, South Carolina.
Lindsey Graham
What are our obligations to the country and to the people we represent? It's the coming up with effective solutions, sitting down and working with the issues. Sitting around table and sorting through the differences.
You can never solve a problem without talking to people with whom you disagree. The United States Senate is predicated and based on consensus building. That was certainly the vision of the founding fathers. And if we abandon that approach, then we do it at the expense of the country and the issues that we need to address to put us back on track.
Olympia Snowe
