Political Quotes

“we have heard several allusions throughout the day of the nature of the historic event in which we participated, the election of the Speaker of the House for the 105th session. That is more than rhetoric, Mr. Speaker. Have Members ever heard of the name of Jonathan Dayton? Jonathan Dayton of New Jersey was elected Speaker of the House in the fifth session in 1797. So when we say today's event was historical, we really mean it. It is a repetition of the preservation of our liberties that emanated from the first and second terms of George Washington and the Fifth Congress, which marked his exit from public service, and has run down to today, when we repeated the process in the preservation of those same liberties which they fought so hard to create for us in the first place. So the message for the day for our constituents is that the election of the Speaker today is a purely political process. When we say 'political process,' that does not demean it, because many in the world today will say, he is a politician, or he is involved in politics, denoting the worst in humanity. But the preservation of our liberties to which I have made reference, beginning with the First Congress and then reendorsed in the Fifth Congress and here today in the 105th, became part and parcel of our history because of the political process it involves.”