Robert Byrd
One's family is the most important thing in life. I look at it this way: One of these days I'll be over in a hospital somewhere with four walls around me. And the only people who'll be with me will be my family.Collection: Family
It is money, money, money! Not ideas, not principles, but money that reigns supreme in American politics.Collection: Money
Hitler never abandoned the cloak of legality; he recognized the enormous psychological value of having the law on his side. Instead, he turned the law inside out and made illegality legal.Collection: Legal
Is it any wonder, why the approval ratings of the Congress go up every time we go into recess?
This war is not necessary. We are truly sleepwalking through history.
To contemplate war is to think about the most horrible of human experiences.
We, unlike Nazi Germany or Mussolini's Italy, have never stopped being a nation of laws, not of men. But witness how men with motives and a majority can manipulate law to cruel and unjust ends.
I have never seen such extreme partisanship, such bitter partisanship, and such forgetfulness of the fate of our fathers and of the Constitution.
Congress is not an ATM.
The ongoing strife in Iraq, and the billions of dollars that the President is seeking to continue that war, give me little comfort that this Administration has learned from its mistakes in Iraq.
Our ideals of freedom, set forth and realized in our Constitution, are our greatest export to the world.
And the president is all wrong when he maintains that a nominee should have an up-or-down vote. The Constitution doesn't say that. The Constitution doesn't say that that nominee shall have any vote at all. There doesn't have to even be a vote.
That's what the Senate is about. It's the last bastion of minority rights, where a minority can be heard, where a minority can stand on its feet, one individual if necessary, and speak until he falls into the dust.
Mission accomplished? The mission in Iraq, as laid out by President Bush and Vice President Cheney, has failed.
The money the president wants to borrow for Iraq will come directly out of the American taxpayer wallets in the form of Medicare and Social Security receipts. That's your money.
It was the separation of powers upon which the framers placed their hopes for the preservation of the people's liberties. Despite this heritage, the congress has been in too many cases more than willing to walk away from its constitutional powers.
It is the Constitution of the United States that has been undermined, undercut, and is under attack. It is the American people's liberties that is in jeopardy. That is why I wrote 'Losing America.'
I have been in Congress for more than a half century. I have lived through times of fear and times of hope. Of despair and of achievement. I have seen our government at its best, but today I fear that we see our government at its worst.
To the American people I say, awaken to what is happening. It is the duty of each citizen to be vigilant, to protect liberty, to speak out, left and right and disagree lest be trampled underfoot by misguided zealotry and extreme partisanship.
I shall never fight in the armed forces with a Negro by my side... Rather I should die a thousand times, and see Old Glory trampled in the dirt never to rise again, than to see this beloved land of ours become degraded by race mongrels, a throwback to the blackest specimen from the wilds.Collection: Patriotic
I am a former Kleagie of the Klu Klux Klan in Raleigh County and adjoining counties of the state, having been appainted to this office [by] Mr. J. L. Baskin of Arlington, Virginia, in 1942... It is necessary that the order be promoted immediately and in every state in the union.Collection: Virginia
If the voters really understood what we were up to they'd vote us out of office.Collection: Office
My old mom told me, 'Robert, you can't go to heaven if you hate anybody.' We practice that. There are white niggers. I've seen a lot of white niggers in my time. I'm going to use that word. We just need to work together to make our country a better country, and I'd just as soon quit talking about it so much.Collection: Mom
There is no doubt that constitutional freedoms will never be abolished in one fell swoop, for the American people cherish their freedoms, and would not tolerate such a loss if they could perceive it. But the erosion of freedom rarely comes as an all-out frontal assault but rather as a gradual, noxious creeping, cloaked in secrecy, and glossed over by reassurances of greater security.Collection: Loss
Be sure you avoid the Ku Klux Klan. Don't get that albatross around your neck. Once you've made that mistake, you inhibit your operations in the political arena.Collection: Mistake
That's what the Senate is about. It's the last bastion of minority rights, where a minority can be heard, where a minority can stand on its feet, one individual if necessary, and speak until he falls into the dustCollection: Fall
There is ample evidence that the horrific events of Sept. 11 have been carefully manipulated to switch public focus from Osama Bin Laden and al-Qaeda, who masterminded the Sept. 11th attacks, to Saddam Hussein, who did not.Collection: Focus
America’s true power lies not in its will to dominate but in its ability to inspire.Collection: Lying
Can it be that we, too, are ready to embrace the foul concepts of atheism? Somebody is tampering with America's soul, I leave it to you who that somebody is.Collection: America
Today I weep for my country. No more is the image of America one of strong, yet benevolent peacekeeper. ... Around the globe, our friends mistrust us, our word is disputed, our intentions are questioned. We flaunt our superpower status with arrogance....After war has ended the United States will have to rebuild much more than the country of Iraq. We will have to rebuild America's image around the globe.Collection: Country
Political correctness gets in the way of all too many things in this country of ours, I am not a subscriber of political correctness by any means, shape or form.Collection: Country
The money the president wants to borrow for Iraq will come directly out of the American taxpayer wallets in the form of Medicare and Social Security receipts. That's your moneyCollection: Iraq
The last UN weapons inspectors left Iraq in October of 1998. We are confident that Saddam Hussein retains some stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons, and that he has since embarked on a crash course to build up his chemical and biological warfare capabilities. Intelligence reports indicate that he is seeking nuclear weapons.Collection: Wmds In Iraq
Do not run a campaign that would embarrass your mother.Collection: Mother
To engage in war is always to pick a wild card. And war must always be a last resort, not a first choice. I truly must question the judgment of any president who can say that a massive unprovoked military attack on a nation which is over 50 percent children is ‘in the highest moral traditions of our country.'Collection: Country
Saddam Hussein is a threat, but the threat is not so great that we must be stampeded to provide such authority to this president just weeks before an election.Collection: President
He (Pres. Bush) rightly decided that it was far better to return all Haitians than to encourage, deliberately or not, tens of thousands of people to take to the open ocean in unseaworthy, overcrowded boats.... When the Haitians sense the door has been cracked open, they will once again prepare their rag-tag armada and set sail for the land of plenty - America.Collection: Ocean