Political Quotes

“Mr. President, I come to the floor this afternoon to speak on a couple of different subjects. Briefly I wish to say a few words about our extraordinary and great colleague who has left the Senate and left this world, but his spirit will be here for many years to come and his presence will be felt here for decades, if literally not centuries, and the extraordinary contribution that Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia has made to the Congress, to the Senate, to our country, and to the world. My colleague, the Senator from Rhode Island, gave a beautiful tribute a few minutes ago. I was in the Chamber and listened to what he said. I wish to add that not only did Robert Byrd rise up through educating himself--in these days that is almost a foreign concept to so many people. You go to school, you get a degree--but he did all of that and more. He read so much. He was so curious about so many aspects of life, not just politics, not just government, but industry, art, and music that literally he was one of the most inspirational human beings I have ever had the pleasure to know or ever read about in that sense. Senator Reed said he lifted himself from literally an orphan status in one of the poorest communities in the world, West Virginia. Parts of it are much like a few parts of our country that are extraordinarily poor, even by world standards.…”