Congresses Quotes & Sayings

Popular congresses are the only means to achieve popular democracy. Any system of government other than popular congresses is undemocratic. — Muammar Al-Gaddafi

I was a salsa dancer for the majority of my life, from, like, 7 to 17, and did the World Salsa Congresses. I realized that I wanted to continue obviously to be a performer. But in my household, being an actor and jumping into acting is not really accepted. — Gina Rodriguez

The aspect of congresses and such meetings generally to which I attach the greatest importance is the discussion. That is why people assemble: to hear different opinions, rather than to pass resolutions. — Fredrik Bajer

In a single week, there might be committees, caucuses, colloquium, congresses, and conventions variously coming together to establish codes, set courses of action, levy complaints, and generally clamor about the world's oldest problems in its newest nomenclature. — Amor Towles

His political and social speeches were cataracts of anecdotes and "loud laughter"; his bodily health was of a bursting sort; his ethics were all optimism; and he dealt with the Drink problem (his favourite topic) with that immortal or even monotonous gaiety which is so often a mark of the prosperous total abstainer. The established story of his conversion was familiar on the more puritanic platforms and pulpits, how he had been, when only a boy, drawn away from Scotch theology to Scotch whisky, and how he had risen out of both and become (as he modestly put it) what he was. Yet his wide white beard, cherubic face, and sparkling spectacles, at the numberless dinners and congresses where they appeared, made it hard to believe, somehow, that he had ever been anything so morbid as either a dram-drinker or a Calvinist. He was, one felt, the most seriously merry of all the sons of men. — Wilkie Collins

What are wanted ... are not Constitutions and Revolutions, nor all sorts of Conferences and Congresses, nor the many ingenious devices for submarine navigation and aerial navigation, nor powerful explosives, nor all sorts of conveniences to add to the enjoyment of the rich, ruling classes ... but one thing only is needful: the knowledge of the simple and clear truth ... that for our life one law is valid - the law of love, which brings the highest happiness to every individual as well as to all mankind. — Leo Tolstoy

Lebedev: France has a clear and defined policy ... The French know what they want. They just want to wipe out the Krauts, finish, but Germany, my friend, is playing a very different tune. Germany has many more birds in her sights than just France ...
Shabelsky: Nonsense! ... In my view the German are cowards and the French are cowards ... They're just thumbing their noses at each other. Believe me, things will stop there. They won't fight.
Borkin: And as I see it, why fight? What's the point of these
armaments, congresses, expenditures? You know what I'd do? I'd gather together dogs from all over the country, give them a good dose of rabies and let them loose in enemy country. In a month all my enemies would be running rabid. — Anton Chekhov

And the annual meetings of the League's Assembly are in effect official peace congresses binding on the participating states to an extent that most statesmen a quarter of a century ago would have regarded as utopian. — Hjalmar Branting

In America most orthodox Christians become defensive or testy when they are asked even to break into a sweat. Most of our efforts up until now have been more symbolic than anything else. We are great at holding conventions, gathering for strategy meetings and seminars, holding congresses on evangelism. But where are the people to run our own antidefamation league? — Cal Thomas

Scientists have made no clear effort to become an important, independently active force of mankind. Whole congresses at a time, they back away from the suffering of others; it is more comfortable to stay within the bounds of science. — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

When the real history of mankind is fully disclosed, will it feature the echoes of gunfire or the shaping sound of lullabies? The great armistices made by military men or the peacemaking of women in homes and in neighborhoods? Will what happened in cradles and kitchens prove to be more controlling than what happened in congresses? When the surf of the centuries has made the great pyramids so much sand, the everlasting family will still be standing, because it is a celestial institution, formed outside telestial time. — Neal A. Maxwell

As best as the Count could determine, the Bolsheviks assembled whenever possible in whichever form for whatever reason. In a single week, there might be committees, caucuses, colloquiums, congresses, and conventions variously coming together to establish codes, set courses of action, levy complaints, and generally clamor about the world's oldest problems in its newest nomenclature. If — Amor Towles

Platoons and plays and stores and congresses do not end - they simply move on to a different dimension. — David Eagleman

Our Congresses consist of Christians. In their private life they are true to every obligation of honor; yet in every session they violate them all, and do it without shame. Because honor to party is above honor to themselves. — Mark Twain

Peace congresses often start by dealing with some of the less important questions in excessive detail, so at the end there is no time to discuss the most important problems. — Fredrik Bajer

Despite the previous efforts of Congresses, our addiction to foreign oil, as the President stated, is greater today than ever before. That dependency is a threat to our national security, and we must address that threat. — Jim Costa

Justice White's conclusion is perhaps correct, if one assumes that the task of a court of law is to plumb the intent of the particular Congress that enacted a particular provision. That methodology is not mine nor, I think, the one that courts have traditionally followed. It is our task, as I see it, not to enter the minds of the Members of Congress - who need have nothing in mind in order for their votes to be both lawful and effective - but rather to give fair and reasonable meaning to the text of the United States Code, adopted by various Congresses at various times. — Antonin Scalia

There is one criticism which cannot be leveled at interparliamentary conferences but which is applicable to a great extent to peace congresses: the meetings waste time. — Fredrik Bajer

Considerable thought was given in early Congresses to the possibility of renaming the country. From the start, many people recognized that United States of America was unsatisfactory. For one thing, it allowed of no convenient adjectival form. A citizen would have to be either a United Statesian or some other such clumsy locution, or an American, thereby arrogating to ourselves a title that belonged equally to the inhabitants of some three dozen other nations on two continents. Several alternatives to America were actively considered -Columbia, Appalachia, Alleghania, Freedonia or Fredonia (whose denizens would be called Freeds or Fredes)- but none mustered sufficient support to displace the existing name. — Bill Bryson

All Congresses and Parliaments have a kindly feeling for idiots, and a compassion for them, on account of personal experience and heredity. — Mark Twain

It is easy to talk about tax simplification, and we all know it is very difficult to accomplish; but for the last three Congresses, I have offered a tax simplification bill that would include a paid-for repeal of alternative minimum tax. — Richard Neal

It seems that, after nineteen centuries of extraordinary glorification, the small Host for which so many cathedrals have sprung up, the small Host that has rested in millions of breasts and that has found a tabernacle and worshippers even in the desert - it seems that the triumphant Host of Lourdes and the Eucharistic Congresses of Chicago and Carthage remains as unknown, as secret as when it appeared for the first time in a room in Jerusalem. Light is in the world as in the days of St. John the Baptist, and the world does not know it — Francois Mauriac

For twelve successive Congresses we have appeared before committees of the two Houses making this plea, that the underlying principle of our Government, the right of consent, shall have practical application to the other half of people. Such a little simple thing we have been asking for a quarter of a century. For over forty years, longer than the children of Israel wandered through the wilderness, we have been begging and praying and pleading for this act of justice. We shall some day be heeded. — Susan B. Anthony

The nation is faced with one of the most corporate-orientated anti-consumer Congresses in our history. — Ralph Nader

Men are excessively ruthless and cruel not as a rule out of malice but from outraged righteousness. How much more is this true of legally constituted states, invested with all this seeming moral authority of parliaments and congresses and courts of justice! The destructive capacity of an individual, however vicious, is small; of the state, however well-intentioned, almost limitless. Expand the state and the destructive capacity necessarily expands too. Collective righteousness is far more ungovernable than any individual pursuit of revenge. That was a point well understood by Woodrow Wilson, who warned: 'Once lead this people into war and they'll forget there ever was such a thing as tolerance. — Paul Johnson

The tone of the new ones, in their TED Talks, in PowerPointed product launches, in testimony to parliaments and congresses, in utopianly titled books, was a smarmy syrup of convenient conviction and personal surrender that he remembered well from the Republic. He — Jonathan Franzen

They came to believe their doctors were holding back limited quantities of a cure, and attempted to take them hostage. They formed armies, congresses, religions; plotted rebellions, fomented treasons, practiced heresies. — Joe Hill

In government, our chief executives have been lawyers. The great majority of our cabinets and congresses are and have been men trained in the law. They have provided the leadership and the statecraft and the store of strength when it was needed. — Robert Kennedy

From 1918 on, trade unionists were to express from the platforms of their congresses the workers' desire for peace through a rational organization of the world. — Leon Jouhaux

The battle for control of science went on. Many administrations and Congresses hadn't wanted technology or the environment assessed at all, as far as Anna could see. It might get in the way of business. They didn't want to know. For Anna there could be no greater intellectual crime. It was incomprehensible to her: they didn't want to know. And yet they did want to call the shots. To Anna this was clearly crazy. Even Joe's logic was stronger. How could such people exist, what could they be thinking? On what basis did they build such an incoherent mix of desires, to want to stay ignorant and to be powerful as well? Were these two parts of the same insanity? — Kim Stanley Robinson

As for the promotion of peace congresses we have had our meetings and assemblies, but the promotion through them of the determined and effective will to peace displaying itself in action and policy remains to be achieved. — Lester B. Pearson

In the year of our Lord 2010, the voters of the United States elected the worst Congress in the history of the Republic. There have been Congresses more dilatory. There have been Congresses more irresponsible, though not many of them. — Charlie Pierce

I hope that in future Congresses there will reemerge a recognition that climate change is a reality, that our policies to meet our energy needs must also deal responsibly with environmental issues, including the damage caused by greenhouse gas emissions. — Jeff Bingaman

To get that word, male, out of the Constitution, cost the women of this country fifty-two years of pauseless campaign; 56 state referendum campaigns; 480 legislative campaigns to get state suffrage amendments submitted; 47 state constitutional convention campaigns; 277 state party convention campaigns; 30 national party convention campaigns to get suffrage planks in the party platforms; 19 campaigns with 19 successive Congresses to get the federal amendment submitted, and the final ratification campaign. — Carrie Chapman Catt