Political Quotes

“the man seated behind me, Robert Byrd, just voted for the 18,000th time, more than any other Senator in history. Let me tell a couple of things that are important to me about my relationship with this unusually brilliant man. I had returned from Nevada to Washington. I was a new Senator. I asked Senator Byrd what he had done that weekend--he was standing back here. He said: I have been studying the Roman Empire. I am reading, for the third time, Gibbon's ``The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.'' He said: What did you do? I was a little chagrined. I said: Well, I grabbed a little pocketbook out of my library at home. It was ``The Adventures of Robinson Crusoe.'' He looked--we all know Senator Byrd when he is thinking about something. He rolled his head back, and he looked up and he said: Robinson Crusoe, let's see. How long was he on that island? Twenty-eight years, two months, two weeks, and five days. I looked at him like: What are you talking about? I just read the book. I didn't know how long he had been there. So I went home that night and looked. Senator Byrd was right. Robinson Crusoe had been on that island 28 years, 2 months, 2 weeks, and 5 days. I bet he hadn't read the book in 45 or 50 years, but he remembered that. All of us will remember how he disliked the line-item veto. He came to the Senate floor once a week for 10 weeks and gave a lecture on the evils of the line-item veto.”