Washington Quotes

Healthy debate has been replaced by automatic sensors that eliminate the need for actual talking during a filibuster - a la 'Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.' Robust debate is necessary in a democratic society. Instead, our discourse has been relegated to media spin by expert entertainers.

It's time to fundamentally change the way that we do business in Washington. To help build a new foundation for the 21st century, we need to reform our government so that it is more efficient, more transparent, and more creative. That will demand new thinking and a new sense of responsibility for every dollar that is spent.

Osama bin Laden, the Saudi-born revolutionary who is believed by most Arab and Iranian observers to be the inspiration of the attacks in New York and Washington, is the best known of the Islamic militants to have emerged in the past 20 years and the least difficult to fathom.

Ohio's doing what it can do, but I wish they'd get their act together in Washington.

Development does not take place in Washington, DC. Development takes place in the rest of the world.

While Obama, the olive-branch poseur, has called for a restoration of 'civility' in Washington and liberal elites whine and whinny about the need for 'no labels,' class-warfare demagoguery has metastasized unchecked.

But the best thing Washington can do for education is realize that our role is limited. Washington must keep its promises, but let those who know our childrens' names- parents, teachers and school board members- make education decisions.

Denzel Washington invoked confidence. When you have confidence, you can do anything. And that's what happened. I learned about being honest and keeping it true, keeping it true in my performance.

I want to aspire to something like what Denzel Washington does, which is try to find scripts written for white actors - or Jodie Foster, who reads scripts for male actors.

Before Booker T. Washington, we have small business owners but we do not have a philosopher of black entrepreneurship, and that's what Washington was.

Look, I am not worried about Washington cutting too much spending too fast. I mean, the kinds of spending cuts we're talking about just right now are $100 billion out of a $3.7 trillion budget.

After the $700 billion bailout, the trillion-dollar stimulus, and the massive budget bill with over 9,000 earmarks, many of you implored Washington to please stop spending money we don't have. But, instead of cutting, we saw an unprecedented explosion of government spending and debt, unlike anything we have seen in the history of our country.

We were in Little Rock. We were assessing a very important issue. In the midst of our discussions, we were receiving urgent inquiries from The Washington Post asking about interviews.

Enough of these little kitty cats we keep sending to Washington. David Dewhurst will compromise every day in the U.S. Senate... It's what he's done every day in state government.

And I spent that time working as an insurance adjuster and going to law school in the evening, and then when I left law school, I joined the Department of Justice in Washington.

But it was very hard for people to separate me out from Hillary Clinton. All their ads were Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, John Edwards, and me. They said I was more liberal than these guys, and that if I went to Washington I'd be supporting their agenda. I found that extremely difficult to overcome.

People need to understand that in Washington, the process is the punishment.

I support health care reform in this country, but the current bills we have before us are too big, too costly, and the people who send me to Washington to be their voice are opposed to them and this process.

Of course people think Washington is arrogant. It is.

Candidate Obama was either exceptionally naive or willfully disingenuous when he vowed to change the way Washington works. The very promise of Hope and Change was rooted in uprooting the Washington modus operandi. But instead of rejecting it, he embraced it all - the secrecy, the closed doors, the political favors, the near-criminal negligence.

Activist government overreach and ongoing economic stagnation have shown us why Washington should not try to displace what is best left to civil society.

We have a paralysis in Washington that's not serving our country. We have to address these issues.

Washington couldn't tell a lie, Nixon couldn't tell the truth, and Reagan couldn't tell the difference.

We have work to do, and Tuesday Americans sent Washington a clear message - get the job done.

What Ottawa and Washington used to think about Turkey or Iran was not very important because we really didn't think much about either, but now what we think about them is extremely important - to ourselves and to many other peoples.

If you take out the killings, Washington actually has a very very low crime rate.

Clinton... believes that the Washington Press Corps is so out of touch that it is absolutely inconceivable that reporters would understand the issues that people are really dealing with in their lives.

Most of the people who live in Washington come from other places and you can learn something from them.

Our goal is to displace the entrenched powers in Washington, restore the rightful balance between the state and federal government.

If Mr. Obama wants to get things done, he must recognize that in Washington only the president has the power to make the first big move.