Political Quotes

“Mr. Speaker, Members of the House, I rise first of all to commend a matriarch in my community who passed away a few days ago, Ms. Mavis Donahue, who came to the United States of America from Jamaica. Of course, much of her family came with her, and they kind of stay together as a group. It was her daughter, Claudette, that I first met, and we worked together for about 40 years. But then her son-in-law, Billy, Claudette's husband, took the first photograph that I ever used in a campaign brochure. Their daughter Erica, who is my goddaughter, was the first person who ever appeared on a campaign brochure when I decided to run for public office. So I simply want to commend them as they prepare to take their mother, their grandmother, their aunt, their friend, their neighbor, back to her home in Jamaica to be buried alongside her mother. I also join my colleagues in coming to pay tribute to our leader, the Reverend Congressman Emanuel Cleaver. We've all talked about his leadership, and I've been told two things about leadership that I always try to remember. One is that leadership is the ability to get other people to do what you want them to do but because they want to do it, meaning that somehow or another you can convince them that what you're talking about is the thing to do. The other thing that I've learned about leadership is that you can't lead successfully where you don't go, and you can't teach what you don't know.…”