Quotes about Congressional Debates

Mo Udall

It is true that everything has been said, but not everyone has said it.

Response to a freshman Congressman who could not understand why a House Debate was still continuing after all the issues seemed to have been aired.

Louisa Catherine Johnson Adams

The excitement during this protracted debate has been intense. The galleries are now crowded with colored persons almost to the exclusion of whites…. They know it to be a question of servitude or freedom, and imagine that the result will immediately affect their condition.

This quotation is very interesting historically. Despite the fact that Washington DC was a thoroughly racially segregated city, and the Southern racists controlled much of Congress, Blacks as well as whites were welcome in the Congressional galleries, and they attended many debates. Slavery and equality were not just debated in the 1850s but the issue was in constant friction from the earliest Congress.

Daniel Patrick Moynihan

The basic work of Congress is done in committees.

Mike Quigley

The policies we debate and enact in Congress have a real impact on people across the country. Climate change, immigration, economic inequality - each of these issues have become hot button, partisan topics, but support or opposition on these pressing issues shouldn't come down to party.

Boris Marshalov

Congress is so strange. A man gets up to speak and says nothing. Nobody listens—and then everybody disagrees.

Some scholars credit this quote earlier to Comedian Will Rogers.

Franklin Pierce

In a body [Congress] where there are more than one hundred talking lawyers ...you can make no calculation upon the termination of any debate and frequently the more trifling the subject the more animated and protracted the discussion

Edgefield, South Carolina, Advertiser

Our Representative, Mr. Brooks, was among Mr. Senator Sumner's audience, on the second day; and it was on this day that Sumner, emptied one of his vials of vile vituperation on the head of Senator Butler, who was then absent at home. As soon as the speech was done and the Senate had adjourned, Mr. Brooks advanced to Sumner and demanded some explanation or retraction of his abuse of Judge Butler; and upon Sumner's refusal to accede to the proposition, our member fell to work upon him with a cane he happened to have in hand at the moment. The beating is said by all the reporters to have been a thorough one. Some say he received fifty stripes; yet we very much doubt if the Captain cared to exceed the legal number of thirty-nine, usually applied to scamps. But the beauty and propriety of the proceeding consists, to no small extent, in the fact that it was accomplished while yet the galleries had not emptied themselves, and while many of Sumner's constituents were probably there to look upon the deed. For our own part, we feel that our Representative did exactly right; and we are sure his people will commend him highly for it.

Congressman Preston Brooks had attacked and almost murdered, Senator Sumner, who was caught in his desk and could not defend himself. While the beating of legislators who positions that were disliked was castigated by almost all newspapers and community leaders in the North and many in the South, this editorial shows how far the polarization of American had gone before the Civil War. It also illustrated that the issue causing the schism was slavery and not as later Southern apologists suggested, different philosophies of government.

Tom Daschle

Members of Congress don’t speak to their colleagues any more. They talk to the national audience.

Dana Bash

One of the things I love most about the Capitol Hill beat is that I have regular access to the lawmakers I cover.

Jeff Shesol

In Congress, that putatively deliberative body, debates devolve into stand-offs between sets of talking points — no different than the hammed-up exchanges between cable-news commentators, but with even worse ratings.

Congressional Debates Quotes