Political Quotes

“I first got interested in and started studying history as an 8-year-old. I grew up in a parsonage where my brothers and I were required, every morning before breakfast, to recite a Bible verse and, every evening before retiring to bed, we had to share with our parents a current event. We didn't have television. Therefore, in order to carry out that rule, we had to read the newspapers. It was delivered to our home every afternoon. Today, those who are living down in my hometown of Sumter, you get the Sumter Daily Item in the morning. Back then it was an afternoon paper. It was my interest in the Presidential campaign of Harry Truman that attracted me to politics. Harry Truman ascended to the Presidency from the Vice Presidency. Of course, no one gave him a chance to get elected on his own. He did not have, according to conventional wisdom, what it took, and he was going to be up against this scion, this big-time prosecutor from New York, Thomas Dewey. In fact, one Chicago newspaper was so assured of the outcome, they didn't bother to wait on the results to write the headlines for their newspapers the day after the election. All of us remember that headline: ``Dewey Wins.'' When the votes were counted, all the votes were counted, Truman had been elected President. That always intrigued me, this man of limited educational background, a disability, without any of all of the trappings of what would make one a big-time leader.…”