Political Quotes

“I am very happy to be here today to talk about a couple of my friends--I should say the Senate's friends. I have received a lot of gifts while I have been here. My colleagues, over the years, have given me things here in the Senate, but one gift stands out really strongly in my mind. On my desk, not far from here, I have this big painting--it is a very famous painting from the National Portrait Gallery of Mark Twain. Mark Twain, I tell people, was born in Nevada, which is really true. Samuel Clemens wasn't, but Mark Twain was. Orion Clemens was chosen as the Territorial Secretary of Nevada, and he told his younger brother Samuel: Come West and I will find you a job. Samuel had been fighting, which he didn't like, in the Civil War, so he came West to join his brother. But his brother couldn't find him a job, so Samuel Clemens bummed around for quite a while. Without belaboring the story too long, the fact is, Mark Twain finally went up to Virginia City, which was booming at the time, and he went to the Territorial Enterprise newspaper and got a job as a reporter. This was a stunningly good and important start for his first writing that he had done. That is where he started his fame. He would have stayed in Nevada longer, but someone challenged him to a duel for some of the things he wrote.…”