Political Quotes

“Madam Speaker, I arrived in this storied Chamber 12-and- a-half years ago fresh off a Florida special election to fill former Representative Robert Wexler's seat. I was the lone freshman in the middle of the 111th Congress. I was eager. I was a little uncertain. I had a bit more hair. I wanted to do right by the people who sent me here. It was during those first days that I met the late John Dingell, then the dean of the House, himself by all accounts a very important man. I don't know about you, Madam Speaker, but at that point, having secured the will of the American people to serve as their Representative in the House of Representatives, and having received my spiffy new congressional pin, I might have been feeling a little important myself, even with the novelty of my new job. {time} 1815 But John Dingell looked me square in the eye and gave me a piece of advice that I would never forget. He said: You are not important. It is what you can do for the people who sent you here, that is what is important. If you never confuse those two, he said, you will be fine. Over the course of my time in Congress, as Mr. Dingell predicted, I have met some very important people, but those people, with all due respect to my colleagues, don't serve in this Chamber. I met Mitch Libman, the childhood friend of Private First Class Leonard Kravitz, Company M, Fifth Infantry Regiment, 24th Infantry Division.…”