Political Quotes

“Madam Speaker, I rise as well as the others to pay tribute to this great man. In this age of candidates and officeholders blown dry and buttoned down, much of us looking alike, Jimmy Quillen stands out. He is of the old school, and I say that in a very complimentary way. He is of the old school. Jimmy Quillen is a character. Jimmy Quillen is himself. He does not try to be anybody else, and I am glad that he does not. He has lent advice and leadership and guidance for all of us as we came along. I represent a district in Kentucky just across the line from Tennessee, my district boundaries being on Tennessee. In fact, my old district before the reapportionments of the 1990's, my district boundaried that of Jimmy Duncan's father, John Duncan. In fact, he was born and raised in Oneida, TN, in Scott County, which is just across the line from where I live. So Jimmy Duncan and his father, John, and Jimmy Quillen and that bunch were all of the same attitude and same ideas. So when I came here in 1981, January of 1981, Jimmy Quillen, of course, had been here by that time a long, long time, as had John Duncan. And those were two people that I just sort of fell in with because we talked the same language, and we had the same ideas, and we came from the same roots and identified with people who did not speak with an accent. So Jimmy Quillen became sort of a mentor for a lot of us.”