Political Quotes

“Madam Speaker, I rise today in honor of several Pittsburgh athletes. The first is a young man named Roberto Clemente. Roberto Clemente was a tremendous player for the Pittsburgh Pirates. He had an 18-year career with the Pirates--3,000 hits, 240 home runs, two-time World Series champion, and he had an arm that was incredible. Nobody in the Major Leagues, after getting a single to right field, ever made a wide turn at first base. Clemente would throw them out, throw it behind them. As we remember him as a baseball player--and this is his last hit, which was a double where he got his 3,000th hit--one of the things I really admired about Roberto Clemente was not the fact that he was a great athlete, that he was a great leader, but that he was a great humanitarian. Roberto died on December 31, 1972. That is 50 years ago this New Year's Eve. He was on a mission trip to deliver aid to the victims of an earthquake in Nicaragua. Mr. Clemente was only 38 years old. I think the thing that we need to remember as Americans is that while people have different talents, their commitment is always to their fellow man. What I remember about Roberto Clemente was just how involved he was in Puerto Rico and in the islands because he knew they needed help. On that day in 1972, in a DC-3 airplane loaded with medical supplies and food supplies, Clemente took off on a trip that would never reach the end he desired.…”