Barbara Jordan Quotes
120 Barbara Jordan Quotes
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The President as the head of government is the trustee of the people. He holds their trust. As he faithfully executes the office, it is necessary for him to trust the instruments of implementation. In so doing, he can attack societal ills such as poverty and ignorance. The absence of such trust is destabilizing to the public weal and violative of the duty to establish justice and promote the general welfare.
Barbara Jordan
I really do not have much interest in being a symbol.
Barbara Jordan
The greatest motivation… has to come from inside you.
Barbara Jordan
[In 1979] The gun lobby channels a lot of money into political campaigns, which can be a politician’s dream or a politician’s bane, depending upon which side you’re on.
Barbara Jordan
I don’t know what had really turned them on, what had given them the spark. I needed to know so that I could keep doing it throughout my campaign.
Barbara Jordan
This country can ill afford to continue to function using less than half of its human resources, brain power, and kinetic energy.
Barbara Jordan
It is not enough to say, ‘right on, brother’ or ‘we shall overcome.’ … You must become part of the decision making process.
Barbara Jordan
I am here simply because all those people in the Eighteenth District of Texas cannot get on planes and buses and come to Washington to speak for themselves. They have elected me as their spokesperson, nothing else, and my only job is to speak for them.
Barbara Jordan
Those who hold the public trust must adhere to the highest ethical standards there are. The job requires it, and the public must demand it.
Barbara Jordan
If you respect differences, you will also respect the ability of other thoughtful people to struggle internally with a problem and come to an answer that is somewhat different than your own.
Barbara Jordan
I am a born optimist. I find that if you can just cut off the layers, the rhetoric, the superficiality, and get to the inner core – the heart [of a person] – that you will find a responsible human being.
Barbara Jordan
It was immigration that taught us, it does not matter where you came from, or who your parents were. What counts is who you are.
Barbara Jordan
You need a core inside you – a core that directs everything you do. You confer with it for guidance. It is not negotiable.
Barbara Jordan
Speaking for myself, I wish that we would get past all the hyphenations that seem to be dividing our society. We must let all Americans be Americans, regardless of where their ancestors were born. Social cohesion requires it. Public policy should support it.
Barbara Jordan
I’m not long on patience. Sometimes I’m more abrupt with people than I ought to be. I always regret it afterward.
Barbara Jordan
I believe that I have a spirit that is not going to disappear. That my body will die and disintegrate, but there is that basic law of physics, that matter is neither created nor destroyed. Now the skin and bones will go back to dust, but the spirit of that individual, the presence of ‘isness’ of me, I feel will live.
Barbara Jordan
[In 1977 on preparing to retire from congress due to health problems] I don’t know here this afternoon what will be next for me. I won’t know what the next step is until I get there. I know that when I went to Boston, and Austin, and Washington, I took with me everything I had learned before. And that’s what I will do this time. That’s the point of it, isn’t it? To bring all you have with you wherever you do.
Barbara Jordan
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
A spirit of harmony can only survive if each of us remembers, when bitterness and self-interest seem to prevail, that we share a common destiny.
Barbara Jordan
I find teaching extraordinarily satisfying. I realize that probably through my entire political career I was in training for this… I’m teaching young people who will move into local, state, and federal positions of power… Some will run for political office. It’s a remarkable opportunity to have an impact on the generation that will succeed me.
Barbara Jordan
Where a man was concerned, the public perception was that he was supposed to get out there and lead and do and make decisions and the rest of it; and no one said to him that he needed to care for babies, or iron the curtains or clean the johns. That was not expected of him. What was expected was that he’d marry a woman to do it for him.
Barbara Jordan
You must understand that I have a tremendous faith in my own capacity.
Barbara Jordan
There is a part of me who enjoys to speak when I have something to say. And if I don’t have anything that I feel needs to be said, then I don’t say it.
Barbara Jordan
Life is full of challenges. And we often measure ourselves and our success in life by how we meet those challenges… Challenge validates our aliveness and often disturbs the order of our lives.
Barbara Jordan
One overdue change already underway is the number of women challenging the councils of political power dominated by white-male policy makers. That horizon is limitless. What we see today is simply a dress rehearsal for the day and time we meet in convention to nominate… Madame President.
Barbara Jordan
[In 1993] For more than 77 years we have been trying to get this country right, and it is still not right. But we are not going to stop.
Barbara Jordan
We do not trust our liberty to a particular branch. We need one branch to check the other.
Barbara Jordan
No one need be afraid. No one need be afraid that officers who commit oppression will pass with immunity.
Barbara Jordan
Today we are not being petty. We are trying to be big, because the task we have before us is a big one.
Barbara Jordan
We are a people in a quandary about the present. We are a people in search of our future.
Barbara Jordan
We are a people in search of a national community. 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
Throughout our history, when people have looked for new ways to solve their problems and to uphold the principles of this nation, many times they have turned to political parties.
Barbara Jordan
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
We believe in equality for all and privileges for none.
Barbara Jordan
We believe that the people are the source of all governmental power
Barbara Jordan
We believe that the government which represents the authority of all the people, not just one interest group, but all the people, has an obligation to actively – underscore actively - seek to remove those obstacles which would block individual achievement -- obstacles emanating from race, sex, economic condition. The government must remove them, seek to remove them.
Barbara Jordan
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
We must provide the people with a vision of the future.
Barbara Jordan
Throw away your crutches and quit complaining because you are black. Don’t belch, choke, smoke and wish for something to go away. Because when you are finished belching, choking, smoking and wishing, society will still be here.
Barbara Jordan
What the people want is very simple. They want an America as good as its promise.
Barbara Jordan
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