Political Quotes

“before I proceed to the Senator from Missouri, I want to thank my friend from Florida for his principled and passionate statement. He speaks from his own experience--his family's own experience in leaving a dictatorship in Cuba and coming to the freedom of this country, but he speaks more broadly from the depths of American history and American experience. We are a very different nation. We are different from our beginning because we defined ourselves not by our geographical borders but by our values and the values expressed in the Declaration of Independence about those human rights, that life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are the endowment of our Creator. Those rights, obviously, were not just the endowment God gave the people of the United States but all human beings anywhere on this planet. It is what makes us a great nation. I think the extent to which we hold to that principle that was the motivation for our founding is one by which we can measure ourselves day by day. I really appreciate that the Senator from Florida has committed himself both to the upholding and the application of the principle of human rights, the sanctity of human rights, and America's role in protecting them, and to persistently continue to come to the floor to speak of particular cases where that principle is being violated. I happened to be on the floor for the postal reform bill, but I wanted to take this opportunity to thank him for his very compelling statement.…”