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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
Call
Official
Nations
Officials
Common
Servant
Tell
Sea
Exhort
Must
Nation
Admonish
Good
Rest
Uphold
People
Example
Hypocritical
Public
Servants

More quotes by Barbara Jordan

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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.
Barbara Jordan
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Justice of right is always to take precedence over might.
Barbara Jordan
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For our immigration policy to make sense, it is necessary to make distinctions between those who obey the law, and those who violate it.
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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I never wanted to be run of the mill.
Barbara Jordan
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The Supreme Court has always been the last bastion of the protection of our freedoms.
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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Let each person do his or her part. If one citizen is unwilling to participate, all of us are going to suffer. For the American idea, though it is shared by all of us, is realized in each one of us.
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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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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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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...for the system to be credible, people actually have to be deported at the end of the process.
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 are a party of innovation. We do not reject our traditions, but we are willing to adapt to changing circumstances, when change we must. We are willing to suffer the discomfort of change in order to achieve a better future.
Barbara Jordan
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We are a people in a quandary about the present. We are a people in search of our future. We are a people in search of a national community.
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 earth is bread we take and eat.
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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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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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.
Barbara Jordan