Political Quotes

“I hesitate to do this, and I will probably be the only member in this body to do so, but I oppose this resolution. I am sure that Paul Coverdell was a far more accomplished politician than I will ever be and that many in this body will ever be; but I do not consider him to be a great man, I do not consider many people in our generation to be great, and certainly not this generation of political leaders. And that is what I would like to speak to today. I think we are a self-indulgent generation that operates on the assumption that the heroes in our experience are the only ones that matter. We build buildings on every piece of prime open space and name buildings after people in our experience rather than leave their legacy to the test of time. We put our own spin on history. We have been blessed with the longest period of sustained peace and prosperity that any generation has ever experienced that they did not have to struggle for, and yet we reward ourselves by spending our surplus and giving ourselves deep tax cuts all at the expense of our children and grandchildren. We operate under the assumption that subsequent generations will never have heroes as great as those in our experience, and that is self-indulgence and self-deception.”