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Senate — news, coverage & facts — IJR

Notable quotes

“The House is composed of very good men, not shining, but honest and reasonably well-informed, and in time they will be found to improve, and not to be much inferior in eloquence, science, and dignity, to the British Commons. They are patriotic enough, and I believe there are more stupid (as well as more shining) people in the latter, in proportion.”
— Fisher Ames, letter to George Richard Minot (May 27, 1789); reported in Works of Fisher Ames (1854), ed. Seth Ames, vol. 1, p. 45.
“I am now here in Congress... I am at liberty to vote as my conscience and judgment dictates to be right, without the yoke of any party on me, or the driver at my heels, with his whip in hand, commanding me to ge-wo-haw, just at his pleasure. Look at my arms, you will find no party hand-cuff on them!”
— Davy Crockett, letter (28 January 1834), reported in A Narrative of the Life of David Crockett (1834), p. 113, final paragraph.
“Congress is so strange. A man gets up to speak and says nothing. Nobody listens. And when he sits down, everybody disagrees.”
— Attributed to Russian actor Boris Marshalov after visiting the House of Representatives
“The rest of the people know the condition of the country, for they live in it, but Congress has no idea what is going on in America, so the President has to tell 'em.”
— Will Rogers as quoted in Defending Liars : In Defense of President Bush and the War on Terror in Iraq (2006) by Howard L. Salter, p. 40
“We have been taught to regard a representative of the people as a sentinel on the watch-tower of liberty.”
— Daniel Webster, remarks in the Senate (May 7, 1834); reported in The Writings and Speeches of Daniel Webster (1903), volume 7, p. 121.
“One of the countless drawbacks of being in Congress is that I am compelled to receive impertinent letters from a jackass like you in which you say I promised to have the Sierra Madre mountains reforested and I have been in Congress two months and haven't done it. Will you please take two running jumps and go to hell.”
— John Steven McGroarty, reported in John F. Kennedy, Profiles in Courage (1956), p. 10.

Quotes via Wikiquote (CC BY-SA), each with its original source.