Political Quotes

“Madam Speaker, it is an honor to be here with my colleagues. It is a different way to support and defend the Constitution than I ever expected to have. I began my service here much like, well, everyone else. We all start the same way. We swear an oath to support and defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic. And that was the first time that I swore it, or any of us here tonight. In 1988, at the climax of the cold war, I enlisted in the infantry. I was honored to serve in Germany after Ronald Reagan had uttered the famous words, ``Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.'' I was honored to be there at a time when many people in the world worried that Ronald Reagan, with his intense rhetoric, would somehow cause world war III, that maybe he was pushing too far, too hard, or asking too much. I was honored to be there when East Germans tore down their own wall. Word had gotten past the Iron Curtain and penetrated the lies they had been told, and they knew what we had here. They tore down their own wall, and, for once, the oppressor did not stop them. {time} 1900 I was honored that Thanksgiving to meet East Berliners who could not believe what they were seeing. They were seeing stores with goods on the shelves, open at night. They asked: Is it like this everywhere? I thought they were talking about how big Berlin was, but they were just in shock because they had not experienced what we had. And what did we have? We had the birth of plenty.…”