Political Quotes

“Mr. Speaker, if I might, I would like to offer some personal comments about the Senator, because, though I am a native Washingtonian, I spent some of the best years of my career as Human Rights Commissioner of New York City and executive assistant to Mayor John Lindsay, where I first came to know the Senator. I got to know him before I ever thought of joining him in the Congress of the United States. Indeed, the District did not even have home rule at the time. As one who maintains her tenure by continuing to teach at Georgetown Law Center, I have a very special appreciation for Senator Moynihan's dual and unequalled feat as an eminently practical politician and reigning intellectual of the Congress of the United States, a legislator so effective, his work product would be hard to match, all the while producing very deep works on social policy. What the Senator has managed to do is to bring the deep thinking from his natural bent as an intellectual to the legislative process. This is, perhaps, why he has chosen to concentrate so often on tough legislative issues, on Social Security, on welfare, yes, and on the black family. And as an African American woman, I think I ought to say right here this afternoon that the Senator was prescient in his work on the black family.”