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We call ourselves public servants but I'll tell you this: we as public servants must set an example for the rest of the nation. It is hypocritical for the public official to admonish and exhort the people to uphold the common good.

Barbara Jordan

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Barbara Jordan
Age: 59 †
Born: 1936
Born: February 21
Died: 1996
Died: January 17
American Politician
Author
Lawyer
Politician
University Teacher
Writer
Houston
Texas
Barbara Charline Jordan
Nations
Officials
Common
Servant
Tell
Sea
Exhort
Must
Nation
Admonish
Good
Rest
Uphold
People
Example
Hypocritical
Public
Servants
Call
Official

More quotes by Barbara Jordan

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I live a day at a time. Each day I look for a kernel of excitement. In the morning, I say: 'What is my exciting thing for today?' Then, I do the day. Don't ask me about tomorrow.
Barbara Jordan
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It is reason, and not passion, which must guide our deliberations, guide our debate, and guide our decision.
Barbara Jordan
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There is no executive order there is no law that can require the American people to form a national community. This we must do as individuals and if we do it as individuals, there is no President of the United States who can veto that decision.
Barbara Jordan
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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.
Barbara Jordan
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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.
Barbara Jordan
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We believe that the people are the source of all governmental power that the authority of the people is to be extended, not restricted.
Barbara Jordan
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I do not bring any professional knowledge of the issue to bear, but what I do bring to my consideration of immigration is a deepened and highly sensitized feeling with those persons who feel alien in our country. I can feel the strangeness they feel because it is something I have experienced in a different area.
Barbara Jordan
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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.
Barbara Jordan
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But this is the great danger America faces. That we will cease to be one nation and become instead a collection of interest groups: city against suburb, region against region, individual against individual. Each seeking to satisfy private wants.
Barbara Jordan
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Justice of right is always to take precedence over might.
Barbara Jordan
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Think what a better world it would be if we all, the whole world, had cookies and milk about three o'clock every afternoon and then lay down on our blankets for a nap.
Barbara Jordan
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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.
Barbara Jordan
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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.
Barbara Jordan
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A government is invigorated when each of us is willing to participate in shaping the future of this nation.
Barbara Jordan
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Throughout out history, when people have looked for new ways to solve their problems, and to uphold the principles of this nation, many times they have turned to political parties. They have often turned to the Democratic Party.
Barbara Jordan
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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.
Barbara Jordan
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The Commission agrees that the federal government should help alleviate these costs. The best way to do so is to reduce illegal immigration.... We recommend immediate reimbursement of criminal justice costs, because these conditions can now be met, but we urge further study of the costs of health care and education before impact aid is provided.
Barbara Jordan
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We are a people trying not only to solve the problems of the present: unemployment, inflation... but we are attempting on a larger scale to fulfill the promise of America.
Barbara Jordan
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I get from the soil and spirit of Texas the feeling that I, as an individual, can accomplish whatever I want to, and that there are no limits, that you can just keep going, just keep soaring. I like that spirit.
Barbara Jordan
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...for the system to be credible, people actually have to be deported at the end of the process.
Barbara Jordan