Everett Dirksen Quotes (22 Quotes)

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

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

I've decided to be a dull, morose bore at these press meetings. It's the only safe course. You give me no choice. I tell a joke and you convert it into an international incident. I coin a whimsical term and you make it appear I am at odds with the President. I indulge in some polite banter and you interpret it as a split in the Party.

A billion here, a billion there, sooner or later it adds up to real money.

I think the Congress finally has succumbed to the very infectious virus of bigness that began at the beginning of the century, when we first heard about big business. After a while we heard about big government. Then we began to hear about big labor. This whole bigness idea has intruded itself on the thinking of the country.

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

I am just a garden variety Republican who, like Lincoln, believes in the Constitution and in the Bill of Rights and in our free-enterprise system, and who wants to see the country go forward, so that those who will be the legatees of what we do here or fail to do will have a full, fair, and decent chance to enjoy the same benefits we have had in our generation.

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

Mr. President, economy is an old-fashioned thing. It savors of horse and buggy days. I am only too glad, however, to say a few words in behalf of economy, for in economy, in frugality, and in the thrift of our Government I think we shall ultimately find ourselves and our salvation.

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.

It is rather tragic, as I look back upon legislative history for the past 20 years, that there has not been more appraisal, that there has not been more careful assessment of the things which we have set in motion in the legislative branch. That is one particular reason why I think there ought to be an automatic time limit.

The oil can is mightier than the sword.

There is no force so powerful as an idea whose time has come.

We have been through this is 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.

Here we are considering an amendment increasing an already huge appropriation by 1,000,000,000. It is like using a teaspoon in order to get a few taxes into the Treasury and at the same time at the back door using a scoop shovel to shovel them out.

Mr. President, there is no royal road to a balanced budget. If there is, I have never discovered it in all the time I have been dealing with the millions of little figures that come to us in what looks like an unexpurgated mail-order catalog but what we call the budget of the United States, which contains some 1,100 pages.

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.

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.

An old man once taught me what a million is. He said, look at your watch, and watch the second hand. You can see it every second, every minute, every day, every night, every week, every month, every year - and in 3 years it would go around 1,000,000 times.

Mr. President, that whimsical English professor, Dr. Parkinson, should formulate another Parkinson's law relating to the public debt since it so closely parallels his law on bureaucratic growth. Just as spending will always reach and overtake revenues so the public debt will constantly pierce the ceiling and finally go into orbit.

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

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.