Political Quotes

“Happy New Year. It is good to see you and everybody back at the beginning of a new year after, I hope, a few days of respite and relaxation with friends and families and, hopefully, we have all had a chance to recharge our batteries now for the work ahead. One of the great things about taking a few days off during the holidays is you get a chance to reflect on your work, your life, your family, what you are doing right, what you are doing wrong. That is what New Year's resolutions are all about, changing some of those habits that maybe aren't serving us all that well. But it is also to sort of reflect on the work here in the Senate. And I want to start by quoting one of the wisest men I knew, and that was my dad. My dad said--he had a whole list of aphorisms, most of which kind of embarrassed my brother and sister and me because they were so corny, but some of them were pretty shrewd and right on. And one of them was that he said the hallmark of intelligence is to learn from your mistakes. The hallmark of intelligence is to learn from your mistakes. And we are merely human and we all make mistakes--we all acknowledge that--but learning from our mistakes is perhaps the most important thing we can do to make progress, to get smarter, to learn from experience, and to do things better the next time. I also thought of another wise man--you might call him a genius-- Albert Einstein, who supposedly said--and I can't vouch for this, but maybe it is apocryphal; maybe it is accurate.…”