Political Quotes

“I want to thank my colleague, Mr. Barrow, for leading this Special Order. I am just so honored really to be here to celebrate and honor somebody I call a friend, John Dingell. I notice, as we're talking here today and as so many have approached the podium, that everyone who approaches says: John Dingell, my friend, my colleague, my mentor, someone I look up to, someone I respect. I would just like to say to my good friend from Michigan that I can't really change those words because they echo my own sentiments. {time} 1950 I want to share with you--and so many of us have talked about the long legislative legacy of John Dingell. As I sat here, Mr. Dingell, I thought, well, I too, when you came into Congress, I had not been born yet. It was about 3 years before I entered the world. When you took that courageous vote in support of the Voting Rights Act and civil rights, I was 6-years-old. I recall at the time living here in the Washington metropolitan area that my father and mother used to bring us to this Capitol almost every Sunday after church. They would bring us and we would run up and down the east front of the Capitol. We would picnic on the west front of the Capitol. I am thinking today how wonderful it is to know that there was someone who was in this institution who so valued this institution and who, even when I was a 6-year old, John Dingell was working to protect my rights. When I think about that, Mr.…”