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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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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
Idea
Citizen
Part
Shared
Persons
Suffer
Ideas
Realized
Person
Citizens
Going
Though
Suffering
Unwilling
American
Participate

More quotes by 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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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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Justice of right is always to take precedence over might.
Barbara Jordan
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My faith in the Constitution is whole, it is complete, it is total, and I am not going to sit here and be an idle spectator to the diminuation, the subversion, the destruction of the Constitution. It is reason and not passion which must guide our deliberations, guide our debate, and guide our decision.
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 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.
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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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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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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If the society today allows wrongs to go unchallenged, the impression is created that those wrongs have the approval of the majority.
Barbara Jordan
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If you're going to play the game [politics] properly, you'd better know every rule.
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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Today, I am an inquisitor. I shall not sit here and be an idle spectator to the diminution, the subversion, the destruction of the Constitution.
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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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.
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 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 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.'
Barbara Jordan
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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.
Barbara Jordan