Everett Dirksen Quotes

A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you're talking about real money.

Stronger than all the armies is an idea thats time has come. ... The time has come for equality of opportunity in sharing in government, in education, and in employment. It will not be stayed or denied. It is here!

I am a man of fixed and unbending principles, the first of which is to be flexible at all times.

Life is not a static thing. The only people who do not change their minds are incompetents in asylums, and those in cemeteries.

Whatever the color of a man's skin, we are all mankind. So every denial of freedom, of equal opportunity for a livelihood, or for an education, diminishes me.

But the basic difficulty still remains: It is the expansion of Federal power, about which I wish to express my alarm. How easily we embrace such business.

When a member of the House moves over to the Senate, he raises the IQ of both bodies.

When I feel the heat, I see the light.

We are becoming so accustomed to millions and billions of dollars that 'thousands' has almost passed out of the dictionary.

When all is said and done, the real citadel of strength of any community is in the hearts and minds and desires of those who dwell there.

Dirksen's Three Laws of Politics: 1. Get elected. 2. Get re-elected. 3. Don't get mad, get even.

The mind is no match with the heart in persuasion; constitutionality is no match with compassion.

I have said, with respect to authorization bills, that I do not want the Congress or the country to commit fiscal suicide on the installment plan.

I am a man of principle, and one of my basic principles is flexibility.

During a political campaign everyone is concerned with what a candidate will do on this or that question if he is elected except the candidate; he's too busy wondering what he'll do if he isn't elected.

The U.S. Senate - an old scow which doesn't move very fast, but never sinks.

We have been through this biennial convulsion four or five different times over the past 10 or 12 years, and now it appears that we are going through this quiet agony all over again.