Barbara Jordan Quotes

If the society today allows wrongs to go unchallenged, the impression is created that those wrongs have the approval of the majority.

We, as human beings, must be willing to accept people who are different from ourselves.

Just remember the world is not a playground but a schoolroom. Life is not a holiday but an education. One eternal lesson for us all: to teach us how better we should love.

My faith in the Constitution is whole, it is complete, it is total, and I am not going to sit here and be an idle spectator to the diminuation, the subversion, the destruction of the Constitution. It is reason and not passion which must guide our deliberations, guide our debate, and guide our decision.

Today, I am an inquisitor. I shall not sit here and be an idle spectator to the diminution, the subversion, the destruction of the Constitution.

Education remains the key to both economic and political empowerment.

A nation is formed by the willingness of each of us to share in the responsibility for upholding the common good.

There is no executive order; there is no law that can require the American people to form a national community. This we must do as individuals and if we do it as individuals, there is no President of the United States who can veto that decision.

Do not call for black power or green power. Call for brain power.

Credibility in immigration policy can be summed up in one sentence: Those who should get in, get in; those who should be kept out, are kept out; and those who should not be here will be required to leave.

Think what a better world it would be if we all, the whole world, had cookies and milk about three o'clock every afternoon and then lay down on our blankets for a nap.

What the people want is very simple - they want an America as good as its promise.

It is a privilege to serve people, a privilege that must be earned, and once earned, there is an obligation to do something good with it.

I believe that women have a capacity for understanding and compassion which a man structurally does not have, does not have it because he cannot have it. He's just incapable of it.

The majority of the American people still believe that every single individual in this country is entitled to just as much respect, just as much dignity, as every other individual.

More is required of public officials than slogans and handshakes and press releases. More is required. We must hold ourselves strictly accountable. We must provide the people with a vision of the future.

But this is the great danger America faces. That we will cease to be one nation and become instead a collection of interest groups: city against suburb, region against region, individual against individual. Each seeking to satisfy private wants.

Life is too large to hang out a sign: 'For Men Only.

How do we create a harmonious society out of so many kinds of people? The key is tolerance -- the one value that is indispensable in creating community.

For our immigration policy to make sense, it is necessary to make distinctions between those who obey the law, and those who violate it.

"We, the people." It is a very elegant beginning. But when that document was completed on the 17th of September in 1787, I was not included in that "We, the people."

One thing is very clear: Illegal immigrants are not entitled to benefits.

We are a party of innovation. We do not reject our traditions, but we are willing to adapt to changing circumstances, when change we must. We are willing to suffer the discomfort of change in order to achieve a better future.

Let there be no illusions about the difficulty of forming this kind of a national community. It's tough, difficult, not easy. But a spirit of harmony will survive in America only if each of us remembers that we share a common destiny.

If you are dissatisfied with they way things are, then you have got to resolve to change them.

I get from the soil and spirit of Texas the feeling that I, as an individual, can accomplish whatever I want to, and that there are no limits, that you can just keep going, just keep soaring. I like that spirit.

It is both a right and a responsibility of a democratic society to manage immigration so that it serves the national interest.

There is no obstacle in the path of young people who are poor or members of minority groups that hard work and preparation cannot cure.

We call ourselves public servants but I'll tell you this: we as public servants must set an example for the rest of the nation. It is hypocritical for the public official to admonish and exhort the people to uphold the common good.

Let each person do his or her part. If one citizen is unwilling to participate, all of us are going to suffer. For the American idea, though it is shared by all of us, is realized in each one of us.

Justice of right is always to take precedence over might.

We must exchange the philosophy of excuse - what I am is beyond my control for the philosophy of responsibility.

The Supreme Court has always been the last bastion of the protection of our freedoms.

The arts, instead of quaking along the periphery of our policy concerns, must push boldly into the core of policy. The arts are a response to our individuality and our nature and help to shape our identity. The arts are not a frill and should not be treated as such. They have the potential to become the driving force for healing division and divisiveness.

If we promise as public officials, we must deliver. If we as public officials propose, we must produce.

I have faith in young people because I know the strongest emotions which prevail are those of love and caring and belief and tolerance.

It is reason, and not passion, which must guide our deliberations, guide our debate, and guide our decision.

When do any of us ever do enough?

The Commission endorses prevention as the principal strategy to use in deterring illegal entries. We applaud the efforts of innovative Border Patrol leaders such as Silvestre Reyes with Operation Hold the Line in El Paso. Operation Hold the Line demonstrated that a strategic use of personnel and technology can combine at our land border, as it has for many years at our airports, to reduce unauthorized crossings.

I live a day at a time. Each day I look for a kernel of excitement. In the morning, I say: 'What is my exciting thing for today?' Then, I do the day. Don't ask me about tomorrow.

I felt somehow for many years that George Washington and Alexander Hamilton just left me out by mistake. But through the process of amendment, interpretation, and court decision, I have finally been included in 'We, the people.'

We must not become the new puritans and reject our society. We must address and master the future together. It can be done if we restore the belief that we share a sense of national community, that we share a common national endeavor. It can be done.

We are a people in a quandary about the present. We are a people in search of our future. We are a people in search of a national community.

The arts are not a frill. The arts are a response to our individuality and our nature, and help to shape our identity. What is there that can transcend deep difference and stubborn divisions? The arts. They have a wonderful universality. Art has the potential to unify. It can speak in many languages without a translator. The arts do not discriminate. The arts lift us up.

We have a positive vision of the future founded on the belief that the gap between the promise and reality of America can one day be finally closed. We believe that.

We want to be in control of our lives. Whether we are jungle fighters, craftsmen, company men, gamesmen, we want to be in control. And when the government erodes that control, we are not comfortable.

We can certainly defuse the intensity of the anti-immigrant feeling if we can bring some reality to the discussion by showing that they are not using that many resources.

If youre going to play the game properly, youd better know every rule.

We must have an economy that does not force the migrant worker's child to miss school in order to earn...just so the family can eat. That is the moral bankruptcy that trickle-down economics is all about.

The imperative is to define what is right and do it.