Political Quotes

“Mr. President, I so much appreciate the words of my colleague from Minnesota, who has brought the Rules Committee to bear in a maximum capacity to fight to defend the freedom to vote for all Americans. When I was in high school, I had the opportunity to live in West Africa under a dictatorship as an exchange student. And in that country, the military dictatorship would exist until there was a new military coup, and then there would be another military dictatorship. And that happened time after time after time. So, as a 16-year-old, I saw the contrast between a nation where citizens had no voice in the future of their country versus the United States of America, where the foundation of our Republic, the core vision of our Nation is that each citizen has the opportunity to participate, to fight to help shape the American dream, the path into the future, to the benefit of a better nation. President Johnson noted that the ballot box is so essential that ``the vote is the most powerful instrument ever devised . . . for breaking down injustice.'' Really, that ballot box is the pulsating heart of our democracy. President Lincoln, when he was speaking at Gettysburg--speaking that the soldiers who died there did not die in vain because they fought to preserve the vision of government of, by, and for the people, that it shall not perish from this Earth. Well, it is the vote that preserves the vision of government of, by, and for the people. It is free access to the ballot box.…”