Just remember the world is not a playground but a schoolroom. Life is not a holiday but an education. One eternal lesson for us all: to teach us how better we should love.
BARBARA JORDANThe stakes … are too high for government to be a spectator sport.
More Barbara Jordan Quotes
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We must not become the new puritans and reject our society. We must address and master the future together. It can be done if we restore the belief that we share a sense of national community, that we share a common national endeavor. It can be done.
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The citizens of America expect more. They deserve and they want more than a recital of problems.
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It is both a right and a responsibility of a democratic society to manage immigration so that it serves the national interest.
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If we promise as public officials, we must deliver. If we as public officials propose, we must produce.
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We must have an economy that does not force the migrant worker’s child to miss school in order to earn…just so the family can eat. That is the moral bankruptcy that trickle-down economics is all about.
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We are a heterogeneous party made up of Americans of diverse backgrounds.
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We must exchange the philosophy of excuse – what I am is beyond my control for the philosophy of responsibility.
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There is no obstacle in the path of young people who are poor or members of minority groups that hard work and preparation cannot cure.
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Let’s all understand that these guiding principles cannot be discarded for short-term political gains. They represent what this country is all about. They are indigenous to the American idea. And these are principles which are not negotiable.
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How do we create a harmonious society out of so many kinds of people? The key is tolerance — the one value that is indispensable in creating community.
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We have a positive vision of the future founded on the belief that the gap between the promise and reality of America can one day be finally closed. We believe that.
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I have faith in young people because I know the strongest emotions which prevail are those of love and caring and belief and tolerance.
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In other times, I could stand here and give this kind of exposition on the beliefs of the Democratic Party and that would be enough. But today that is not enough. People want more.
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Credibility in immigration policy can be summed up in one sentence: Those who should get in, get in; those who should be kept out, are kept out; and those who should not be here will be required to leave.
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Do not call for black power or green power. Call for brain power.
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I felt somehow for many years that George Washington and Alexander Hamilton just left me out by mistake. But through the process of amendment, interpretation, and court decision, I have finally been included in ‘We, the people.’
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Even as I stand here and admit that we have made mistakes I still believe that as the people of America sit in judgment on each party, they will recognize that our mistakes were mistakes of the heart. They’ll recognize that.
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One thing is very clear: Illegal immigrants are not entitled to benefits.
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It is a privilege to serve people, a privilege that must be earned, and once earned, there is an obligation to do something good with it.
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I believe that women have a capacity for understanding and compassion which a man structurally does not have, does not have it because he cannot have it. He’s just incapable of it.
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Things which matter cost money, and we’ve got to spend the money if we do not want to have generations of parasites rather than generations of productive citizens.
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What we have to do is strike a balance between the idea that government should do everything and the idea, the belief, that government ought to do nothing. Strike a balance.
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Our concept of governing is derived from our view of people. It is a concept deeply rooted in a set of beliefs firmly etched in the national conscience, of all of us.
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If you had to work in the environment of Washington, D.C., as I do, and watch those men who are so imprisoned and so confined by their eighteenth-century thought patterns, you would know that if anybody is going to be liberated, it’s men who must be liberated in this country.
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We can certainly defuse the intensity of the anti-immigrant feeling if we can bring some reality to the discussion by showing that they are not using that many resources.
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We, as human beings, must be willing to accept people who are different from ourselves.
BARBARA JORDAN