Political Quotes

“Mr. President, about 50 years ago, William Proxmire rose in this esteemed body and told us about government waste. He called it the Golden Fleece Award. They were studying things like dating and love and what makes love, and we had these great scientific studies about love. These are William Proxmire's words from the early 1970s. He was a conservative Democrat. He says: I object to this [study on love] because no one--not even the National Science Foundation--can argue that falling in love is a science; not only because I'm sure that even if they spend $84 million or $84 billion they wouldn't get an answer that anyone would believe. I'm also against [this study on love] because I don't want the answer. I believe that 200 million other Americans want to leave some things in life a mystery, and right at the top of things we don't [need] to know is why a man falls in love with a woman and vice versa. Stirring words. The Golden Fleece Award--I remember as a kid everybody talked about it. It was in the newspapers. So what have we done to curb the wasteful appetite, the abuse of government that has happened at the National Science Foundation since 1972? Not a damn thing. Here is one of my other favorites from William Proxmire's days. The FAA was named for spending $57,000 on a study of the physical measurements of 432 airline stewardesses. These included the distance from knee to knee while sitting and the length of the buttocks.…”