Edmund S. Muskie Quotes

There is no Senate rule governing the proper uses of the filibuster.

It used to be in the Senate that if you were filibustering, you stood up. There was a physical dimension to it, that you - when you became exhausted you would have to leave the floor. That was the idea of the filibuster.

The Democrats filibustered something in the Senate when I was eight years old. I don't remember what it was on and I didn't honestly care when I was eight years old. I cared about the history and the Senate rules.

We have a level of obstruction and an abuse of the Senate rules that we have never had before… We have a dysfunctional Senate. Some say it’s a broken Senate.

The filibuster has only been around for 2564 years.

If I have to filibuster on the Senate floor, I'll even read the King James Bible until the wall is funded.

There are conspiracies all over the Senate floor on any day!

I think I must be the only grandmother in the world who was given an iPod by her grandsons. It has changed my life - I'd be lost without it.

People think I'm just an old Luddite, but that's untrue. I buy every new gizmo as it comes out, play with it until I understand how it works, and then give it away.

The House of Representatives eliminated the filibuster way back in the 19th century, and somehow it managed to survive.

We've seen filibusters of bills and nominations that ultimately passed with 90 or more votes. Why filibuster something that has that kind of support? Just to slow down the process and keep the Senate from working.

I keep thinking I should get a phone, because everyone's got one and it becomes increasingly difficult to exist in a society where everyone else has moved ahead and you haven't.

The Senate trying to govern cyberspace is analogous to King George believing he could still govern the colonies even though he had never been there.

The leaders of the Senate ... have no power delegated to them except on the basis of courtesy, accommodation, and a sense of responsibility.

Anyone who works in the Senate is often in doubt as to the will of the Senate.

A committee of the Senate ought to confer with a committee of the President through a head of a department and not with the Chief Magistrate, for in the latter case a committee of that House is equal to the President.

Public business in the United State Senate should be done in the public.

The minority in the Senate has the power to prevent the majority from acting.

Anybody who get easily frustrated should not be in the United States Senate. We operate by unanimous consent …. Any Senator can stop the train.

Mr. Speaker, it is matter of common knowledge that an epidemic of alarming proportions is prevailing throughout the country. Out of an abundant precaution the Senate has ordered the galleries closed, which action, I understand, meets with the approval of the medical authorities, and so I ask unanimous consent that the Speaker be instructed to close the galleries of this House until further action shall be taken by the House.

Eliminating the filibuster would eliminate the people’s voices in the Senate.

Under the classification rules observed by the Senate, we are not even allowed to tap out the truth in Morse code—and we tried just about everything else we could think of to warn the American people.

The history of Congress shows that once parliamentary tools become big enough obstacles for the majority party, they are abolished or reformed.

No one knows the Senate better than Joe Biden; he lived there for 35 years.

No one ever built the filibuster rule. It just kind of was created.