Wyden Senator Quotes

I don't piss you off, I turn you on - Senator Jeremy Miller ~ Margaret McHeyzer

This book [Dreams from My Father] was more of a reflection on my public life, now as a U.S. senator and before that as a state senator; how my perspectives around the issues of the day are shaped by my background. ~ Barack Obama

Senator Kerry does not support our troops. If he had won the election, there wouldn't be any troops left in Iraq. President Bush, on the other hand, has given our troops an opportunity to fight without end. That's creating jobs. In fact, the president's policies helped create 104 more job openings last month. Now who's stupid, Senator? ~ Stephen Colbert

Tim Kaine has been obviously a governor. He's been a senator. He's one of the smartest rising stars in the Democratic Party. He is very plausible as someone who could sit in and be president. ~ David Brooks

There is an old saying that all roads lead to Rome. It seems the administration so often clearly believes that no matter what the evidence was at any particular time, essentially everything led to Saddam Hussein. ~ Ron Wyden

Perhaps the twentieth-century Senator is not called upon to risk his entire future on one basic issue in the manner of Edmund Ross or Thomas Hart Benton. Perhaps our modern acts of political courage do not arouse the public in the manner that crushed the career of Sam Houston and John Quincy Adams. Still, when we realize that a newspaper that chooses to denounce a Senator today can reach many thousand times as many voters as could be reached by all of Daniel Webster's famous and articulate detractors put together, these stories of twentieth-century political courage have a drama, an excitement - and an inspiration - all their own. ~ John F. Kennedy

There is another, grimmer history to the filibuster, though, one that carries special relevance for me. For almost a century, the filibuster was the South's weapon of choice in its efforts to protect Jim Crow from federal interference, the legal blockade that effectively gutted the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments. Decade after decade, courtly, erudite men like Senator Richard B Russell of Georgia used the filibuster to choke off any and every piece of civil rights legislation before the Senate, whether voting rights bills, or fair employment bills, or anti-lynching bills. ~ Barack Obama

I can think of a lot of words to describe Senator Kerry's position on Iraq; 'consistent' is not one of them. ~ Dick Cheney

People are tagged with other labels that point to the lowest-status group they belong to, as in "woman doctor" or "black writer," but never "white lawyer" or male senator". Any category that lowers our status relative to others' can be used to mark us; to be privileged is to go through life with the relative ease of being unmarked. ~ Allan G. Johnson

I know I said this before, but it bears repeating. You know Tate won't like you staying with me."
"I don't care," she said bitterly. "I don't tell him where to sleep. It's none of his business what I do anymore."
He made a rough sound. "Would you like to guess what he's going to assume if you stay the night in my apartment?"
She drew in a long breath. "Okay. I don't want to cause problems between you, not after all the years you've been friends. Take me to a hotel instead."
He hesitated uncharacteristically. "I can take the heat, if you can."
"I don't know that I can. I've got enough turmoil in my life right now. Besides, he'll look for me at your place. I don't want to be found for a couple of days, until I can get used to my new situation and make some decisions about my future. I want to see Senator Holden and find another apartment. I can do all that from a hotel."
"Suit yourself."
"Make it a moderately priced one," she added with graveyard humor. "I'm no longer a woman of means. From now on, I'm going to have to be responsible for my own bills."
"You should have poured the soup in the right lap," he murmured.
"Which was?"
"Audrey Gannon's," he said curtly. "She had no right to tell you that Tate was your benefactor. She did it for pure spite, to drive a wedge between you and Tate. She's nothing but trouble. One day Tate is going to be sorry that he ever met her."
"She's lasted longer than the others."
"You haven ~ Diana Palmer

As the Senator from Vermont was kind enough to note, I did have the experience of being commander in chief of our National Guard in Missouri for 8 years. ~ Kit Bond

I've been an Obama supporter since he announced he was campaigning. I was aware of him as a senator, but I wasn't as engaged as I probably should've been. ~ Pete Wentz

Milk money: cash, cows, and the death of the American dairy farm / Kirk Kardashian; foreword by Senator Bernie ~ Kirk Kardashian

I am a mom as well as a senator! ~ Patty Murray

My first [wife] was an angel; My second a silly woman; My third a Roman Senator; My fourth a pretty little thing; My fifth - all woman! ~ Nat C. Goodwin

Or we could change the definition in another way. We could remove the part of the definition that refers to "supernatural powers." Then sorcery and witchcraft would include beliefs that unknown persons harm others using techniques that cannot be demonstrated to be real or that are not observable. In the United States, Senator Joseph McCarthy played on people's fears in the 1950s by claiming that the government and Hollywood were filled with Communists dedicated to overturning all that Americans hold dear. In the 1980s and 1990s, various supremacists blamed certain political factions and minorities for social problems and what they believed to be the degeneration of their nation's values. Will there be other witch hunts in the twenty-first century? ~ James Peoples

Look, we live in a celebrity culture and sometimes you get caught in the wave and the buzz and a lot of it's flattering but, you know, one of the things that I try to remind people of is, is that I was in politics as a state senator operating in obscurity for many years. Before that I was a community organizer working in low income communities in Chicago and nobody knew my name then. And so, having involved myself in public service for a pretty long time without getting too much attention, hopefully I can keep some of the attention that I'm getting now in perspective. ~ Barack Obama

It the Senator can find in Title VII any language which provides that an employer will have to hire on the basis of percentage or quota related to color, race, religion, or national origin, I will start eating the pages one after another, because it is not in there. ~ Hubert H. Humphrey

John Kerry says that he wants to debate President Bush once a month until the election. This could be a risky move for Senator Kerry. If Bush doesn't show up for the debates, John Kerry may end up debating an empty chair. And that could be pretty much a toss up as to which one has the better personality. ~ Jay Leno

O, Senator, drop your trousers! Loosen your cravat! Eschew your spats and step into that shallow, teeming world of mayflies and dragonflies and frogs' eyes staring eye-to-eye with your own, and the silty bottom. Cease your filibuster against the world God gave you. ~ Paul Harding

There's nothing noble or selfless about politicians and there never has been. Putting it charitably, Profiles in Courage is a compendium of Democratic mythology, ghostwritten for an ambitious young Massachusetts Senator who never did a thing for himself if he could pay to have it done by others. ~ L. Neil Smith

You know, to listen to Senator Lieberman, Senator Kerry, Representative Gephardt, I'm anti-Israel, I'm anti-trade, I'm anti-Medicare and I'm anti-Social Security. I wonder how I ended up in the Democratic Party. I'm not a new entrant to the Democratic Party. I've been here a long time. ~ Howard Dean

Rush Holt would be a fine senator. He's an actual physicist, which is neat. He cares very strongly about global warming, which is probably the single most pressing issue of our era. ~ Alex Pareene

The 21st Amendment gives the states the right to decide what the drinking ages should be and other aspects relative to alcoholic beverages, and I support that. As a United States senator, I want to weigh in - this is not my agenda. ~ Pete Coors

Steel tempered by fire," she said aloud, without thinking.
"Am I?" he asked.
She smiled sadly. "Aren't you?"
He let out a long, slow breath and some of the tension drained out of him. He looked at her quizzically. "You give me peace," he said unexpectedly. "The only time I ever feel it is when I'm with you. God knows why, when you set me off like a bomb."
She searched his eyes. "Tate, Senator Holden has a reason for what he did," she told him seriously. "I don't pretend to know what it is, but I know him. He's not like some politicians who lie when the truth would suit better. He has integrity. He doesn't hold grudges and he doesn't backstab. You know that," she added with conviction.
He scowled. "Yes, I do." His narrow eyes searched hers. "What do you know, Cecily?"
"I know archaeology," she replied.
He reached out and touched her firm little chin with hard fingers. "You're keeping something from me," he said in a low, deep tone. "I'm not sure why I sense that, but I do."
"You think you know all about me," she replied, trying to draw back. "Don't…do that," she muttered, reaching up to catch his hair-roughened wrist in her warm fingers.
His breath caught. "Fatal error, Cecily," he said huskily, moving in, giving in to the hunger that had really brought him to her apartment at this hour of the night. "You shouldn't have touched me… ~ Diana Palmer

In 2007, early in the improbable presidential candidacy of Barack Obama, the young first-term senator began a series of foreign-policy speeches that seemed too general to provide a guide to what he might do if elected. ~ Elliott Abrams

I want to say that further you are not a great chief of this country. That you have no following, no power, no control." Logan continued, "You are on an Indian reservation merely at the sufferance of the government. You are fed by the government, clothed by the government, your children are educated by the government, and all you have and are today is because of the government. If it were not for the government you would be freezing and starving today in the mountains. I merely say these things to notify you that you cannot insult the people of the United States of America or its committees ... the government feeds and clothes and educates your children now, and desires to teach you to become farmers, and to civilize you, and make you as white men.
-Senator John Logan, 1883 ~ Dee Brown

In 2008, as a matter of fact, I had people accusing me of being a Senator Obama supporter because I wouldn't slam him. I said, 'Well, consider the fact that I voted for impeachment for President Clinton, but it wasn't a personal vote. I voted based on the facts and the law and the Constitution and what we were dealing with.' ~ J. C. Watts

If Senator Obama becomes pro-life then I'll consider giving him my vote. ~ Alveda King

I've been interested in American politics since I was eight. That was in 1968. It was an interesting year. I was a huge Eugene McCarthy supporter, so I guess he was the first senator I really knew about and cared about. ~ George Packer

It's tempting, because as one senator said to me, 'We know if we invite baseball down, we'll draw a crowd'. ~ Fay Vincent

I think we are making progress, but we have long way to go. People also have got to understand the agenda that we are fighting for. This is a senator who has taken on every powerful special interest, whether it's Wall Street, whether it's drug companies who are ripping off the American people, the military industrial complex. ~ Bernie Sanders

He works fast," Alan commented as he lifted his wine.
"David?" Shelby sent him a puzzled look. "Actually his fastest sped is crawl unless he's got a guitar in his hands."
"Really?" Alan's eyes met hers as he sipped, but she didn't understand the amusement in them. "You only stood him up tonight, and already he's planning his wedding to someone else."
"Stood him-" she began on a laugh, then remembered. "Oh." Torn between annoyance and her own sense of te ridiculous, Shelby toyed with the stem of her glass. "Men are fickle creatures," she decided.
"Apparently." Reaching over, he lifted her chin with a fingertip. "You're holding up well."
"I don't like to wear my heart on my sleeve" Exasperated, amused, she muffled a laugh. "Dammit, he would have to pick tonight to show up here."
"Of all the gin joints in all the towns..."
This time the laugh escaped fully. "Well done," Shelby told him. "I should've thought of that line myself; I heard the movie not long ago."
"Heard it?"
"Mmm-hmmm. Well..." She lifted her glass in a toast. "To broken hearts?"
"Or foolish lies?" Alan countered.
Shelby wrinkled her nose as she tapped her glass against his. "I usually tell very good ones. Besides, I did date David.Once.Tree years ago." She finished off her wine. "Maybe four.You can stop grinning in that smug, masculine way any time, Senator."
"Was I?" Rising, he offered Shelby her damp jacket. "How rude of me."
"It would've been more ~ Nora Roberts

Most recently, the President's reluctance to offend Senator Rick Santorum
a Catholic theocrat who believes that states should have the power to arrest gay lovers in their bedrooms, or even to criminalize couples who use contraceptives
was an occasion to wonder what, exactly, Mr. Bush was born-again into. ~ Bill Keller