Political Quotes

“Madam Speaker, I rise today to support House Resolution 1717, congratulating imprisoned Chinese democracy advocate Liu Xiaobo on the award of the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize. I thank my colleague and good friend Congressman Chris Smith for introducing this resolution. China is an appropriately proud nation, with more than 5,000 years of recorded history, a history filled with great achievements. Chinese is perhaps the world's oldest, continuously used written language. More recently, the nation has achieved near universal literacy and has fed its 1.3 billion people most adequately. And most recently, China has achieved human space flight, joining the international community of space-faring nations. And on this Friday, another first, the first Nobel Peace Prize. But inexplicably, this achievement has been met by this Chinese Government with opposition and outright hostility. This is an incomprehensible failure of national pride and patriotism. I call upon this Chinese Government to be on the right side of history. I know that Chinese history will some day vindicate Liu Xiaobo, as it has done with other great figures in Chinese history. In the city of Hangzhou, which is near Suzhou, my ancestral home where my family has lived for 500 to 600 years, Hangzhou was the capital of the Southern Song Dynasty and the scene of conflict between the Song Dynasty and northern tribes.…”