Political Quotes

“as a representative of the people of the Third Congressional District of Maryland, I rise today to speak in honor of Detective John M. Gibson and Officer J.J. Chestnut of the Capitol Hill Police. These last few days here on Capitol Hill have been somber ones and many of us have been given to thoughts of the abruptness of life; how one minute you can accept the greeting of an officer as you walk to work and the next you learn that you will never hear those words again, that he has been slain in a heroic stand to save your life and the lives of your coworkers and hundreds of strangers. These are sad times, Mr. Speaker. Yet we should not, we cannot, allow the sadness to overwhelm the message of the lives of Officers Chestnut and Gibson. There is a message rooted in the ideas of democracy and duty. Democracy has a price. In a day and age when life for so many of us is so good, some of us may have forgotten that. Tragically, the Chestnut and Gibson families know that the price for their father and husband was life itself. But it was their sense of duty, their commitment to protecting this building that stands for democracy and the people in it, that should force all of us to consider our own duty to democracy. It is said that Robert E. Lee once wrote to his son, and I quote: "Duty, then, is the sublimest word of our language. Do your duty in all things.…”