Legislation Bills Quotes & Sayings

Good thing I know we're meant to be together, or I'd wonder if you were sent to punish me. — Eve Langlais

True partisans draft legislation that gives themselves everything and their enemies nothing. They love bills that repulse and even disgust the other side. Today's politics have become an all-or-nothing, black-or-white, zero-sum game - it's not a contact sport but a blood sport. — Jim Cooper

In a moment when young black voters were key to the election and the reelection of a black president, when the Department of Justice has been led these years by the first two African-American attorneys general, when many big cities boast African-American league prosecutors and police chiefs and mayors, even in this moment, why is it that it still feels to so many young people that there is more power for change on the court than in the courts? — Melissa Harris-Perry

I'm naturally a mousy blonde, so I dye my hair, and my eyebrows would disappear if I didn't get through at least a pencil a month. — Beth Ditto

The U.S. Senate does not allow legislative provisions to be included in appropriations bills, for much the same reason that most Americans are concerned about earmarks: it creates a slippery slope by which lobbyists and special interest groups can sneak provisions into large, must-pass legislation. — Ron Wyden

McCarthy had ten years in the House of Representatives, only two terms as a senator. What did he pass? Are there any bills or any piece of legislation that he's identified with? Not at all. — Robert Dallek

I did sit down with Jared Polis (D-CO), and we had a good discussion about having the LGBT [Equality] Caucus pool some money and perhaps hire a staffer like some of the other caucuses do. That way we could hopefully be even more proactive on issues like ENDA, student non-discrimination and some of the other bills that are out thereit's just a matter of now figuring out - having seven of us total - how can we best move those forward either through legislation and working with the president to issue orders. — Mark Pocan

There is another, grimmer history to the filibuster, though, one that carries special relevance for me. For almost a century, the filibuster was the South's weapon of choice in its efforts to protect Jim Crow from federal interference, the legal blockade that effectively gutted the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments. Decade after decade, courtly, erudite men like Senator Richard B Russell of Georgia used the filibuster to choke off any and every piece of civil rights legislation before the Senate, whether voting rights bills, or fair employment bills, or anti-lynching bills. — Barack Obama

The practice in Washington among the representa- tives of the great grafters is never to make a fight against a bill in both houses. The wisdom of this policy is plain. One house is thereby always permitted to appear to be the friend of the people, while the killing of a measure in one house is all that is necessary. Every Washington newspaper correspondent knows this. Any one may confirm the statement by watching the course of legislation for a few years. In the past, it has been the custom to introduce these fake bills in the house, pass them to appease public clamor, and impose upon the senate the duty of killing them. Perhaps the senators, now that they are elected by the people, will demand the right to pass a few fake bills themselves and let the representatives bear the odium of killing them. — Anonymous

Never believe in any faith younger than you are. — Dahlia Lithwick

Borrowing money on what's called 'easy terms,' is a one-way ticket to the Poor House. If you think it ain't a Sucker Game, why is your Banker the richest man in your Town? Why is your Bank the biggest and finest building in your Town? Instead of passing Bills to make borrowing easy, if Congress had passed a Bill that no Person could borrow a cent of Money from any other person, they would have gone down in History as committing the greatest bit of Legislation in the World. — Will Rogers

Einstein has a feeling for the central order of things. He can detect it in the simplicity of natural laws. We may take it that he felt this simplicity very strongly and directly during his discovery of the theory of relativity. Admittedly, this is a far cry from the contents of religion. I don't believe Einstein is tied to any religious tradition, and I rather think the idea of a personal God is entirely foreign to him. — Wolfgang Pauli

I think we have a Tea Party mandate, and that Tea Party mandate is for good-government type of things, things like term limits, things like a balanced budget amendment, things like read the bills for goodness sakes, things like that maybe Congress should only pass legislation that they apply to themselves as well. — Rand Paul

I laugh at the so-called 'practical' people and their wisdom. If one wants to live like a beast, it could naturally do, to turn its back on humanity's suffering and only care about its own pelt. — Karl Marx

I am rich because I sell a lot of books, but it's not my drive. — Pierre Dukan

Johnson's voting record - a record twenty years long, dating back to his arrival in the House of Representatives in 1937 and continuing up to that very day - was consistent with the accent and the word. During those twenty years, he had never supported civil rights legislation - any civil rights legislation. In Senate and House alike, his record was an unbroken one of votes against every civil rights bill that had ever come to a vote: against voting rights bills; against bills that would have struck at job discrimination and at segregation in other areas of American life; even against bills that would have protected blacks from lynching. — Robert A. Caro

Bills of attainder, ex-post facto laws and laws impairing the obligation of contracts are contrary to the first principles of the social compact, and to every principle of sound legislation. — James Madison

I would listen with growing outrage as hypocritical and obtuse American senators made all these demands of Iraqi legislators and yet themselves could not even pass budgets or appropriations bills, not to mention deal with tough challenges like the budget deficit, Social Security, and entitlement reforms. So many times I wanted to come right out of my chair at the witness table and scream, You guys have been in business for over two hundred years and can't pass routine legislation. How can you be so impatient with a bunch of parliamentarians who've been at it a year after four thousand years of dictatorship? — Robert M. Gates

It's never felt more Canadian to be Canadian than it does now. — Douglas Coupland

Since I joined Congress, I've been shocked at how many times we were forced to vote on 1,000-plus-page bills without ample time to read or review what was in the final legislation. It's no wonder Congress doesn't enact good policy. — Erik Paulsen

This year I hope to introduce legislation that would require Power Administrations to list direct and indirect costs associated with ESA compliance as a line item on customer's power bills. — Cathy McMorris Rodgers

There are bills being discussed to raise the amount that Members of Congress pay in to their benefits and I support these pieces of legislation. — Rob Woodall

327 men on board, and 186 men, some of them close friends, died that day. I was one of the 141 that made it out alive. I'll bet you're wondering why I'm telling you this - you're probably thinking I'm drifting again - so I might as well get to it. On the raft, with this big battle raging all around us, I realized that I wasn't afraid anymore. All of a sudden, I knew I'd be okay because I knew that Clara and I weren't done yet, and this feeling of peace just came over me. You can call it shell shock if you want, but I know what I know, and right there, under an exploding sky filled with gun smoke, I remembered — Nicholas Sparks

The ADA was a landmark civil rights legislation. It was a bill of rights for persons with disabilities, a formal acknowledgement that Americans with disabilities are Americans first and that they're entitled to the same rights and freedoms as everybody else. — Valerie Jarrett

You want to know who's now running the U.S. Army, the U.S. Navy and the Marines and calling the shots where it counts? Fundamentalist Muslims and homosexual activists. — Bryan Fischer