Political Quotes

“I want all to know that there is no disagreement with the objectives, the end goals being sought by the advocates of this amendment and those of us who oppose it. I believe we are all Americans of good conscience and we seek for the Cuban people what we seek for ourselves. We seek a nation that lives with the freedoms associated with democracy. We seek a nation that respects the basic human rights of its people. We seek a nation which will encourage an economy that offers hope to the people of Cuba. We have had a long association with Cuba. It is an association which runs almost to the first Spanish exploration of our two nations. We were a major participant in the freedom of Cuba in 1898. In fact, we had celebrations within the last few months of our participation in the independence of Cuba. So our goals for those people, our feeling for the people of Cuba, is a shared one. The question is, What is the appropriate course of U.S. policy to achieve those goals? I believe, as with every other question of what U.S. foreign policy should be, it should be a mixture of a consideration of our national interests and a consideration of the universal values for which America has stood since those words in the Declaration of Independence that declared that we saw that all men--not just American men, not just men, but women--that all persons had certain inalienable rights. Those have been an important factor in our relationships with other peoples of other nations.…”