Everett Dirksen Quotations

A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you're talking about real money.

I am a man of fixed and unbending principles, the first of which is to be flexible at all times.

When all is said and done, the real citadel of strength of any community is in the hearts and minds and desires of those who dwell there.

There is no force so powerful as an idea whose time has come.

I have said, with respect to authorization bills, that I do not want the Congress or the country to commit fiscal suicide on the installment plan.

The oil can is mightier than the sword.

The mind is no match with the heart in persuasion; constitutionality is no match with compassion.

But the basic difficulty still remains: It is the expansion of Federal power, about which I wish to express my alarm. How easily we embrace such business.

When a member of the House moves over to the Senate, he raises the IQ of both bodies.

We are becoming so accustomed to millions and billions of dollars that 'thousands' has almost passed out of the dictionary.

We have been through this is biennial convulsion four or five different times over the past 10 or 12 years, and now it appears that we are going through this quiet agony all over again.

Mr. President, there is no royal road to a balanced budget. If there is, I have never discovered it in all the time I have been dealing with the millions of little figures that come to us in what looks like an unexpurgated mail-order catalog but what we call the budget of the United States, which contains some 1,100 pages.

Mr. President, that whimsical English professor, Dr. Parkinson, should formulate another Parkinson's law relating to the public debt since it so closely parallels his law on bureaucratic growth. Just as spending will always reach and overtake revenues so the public debt will constantly pierce the ceiling and finally go into orbit.

Mr. President, economy is an old-fashioned thing. It savors of horse and buggy days. I am only too glad, however, to say a few words in behalf of economy, for in economy, in frugality, and in the thrift of our Government I think we shall ultimately find ourselves and our salvation.

Here we are considering an amendment increasing an already huge appropriation by $1,000,000,000. It is like using a teaspoon in order to get a few taxes into the Treasury and at the same time at the back door using a scoop shovel to shovel them out.

I think the Congress finally has succumbed to the very infectious virus of bigness that began at the beginning of the century, when we first heard about big business. After a while we heard about big government. Then we began to hear about big labor. This whole bigness idea has intruded itself on the thinking of the country.

I've decided to be a dull, morose bore at these press meetings. It's the only safe course. You give me no choice. I tell a joke and you convert it into an international incident. I coin a whimsical term and you make it appear I am at odds with the President. I indulge in some polite banter and you interpret it as a split in the Party.

An old man once taught me what a million is. He said, look at your watch, and watch the second hand. You can see it every second, every minute, every day, every night, every week, every month, every year - and in 3 years it would go around 1,000,000 times.

A billion here and a billion there, and soon you're talking about real money.

A billion here, a billion there, sooner or later it adds up to real money.

It is rather tragic, as I look back upon legislative history for the past 20 years, that there has not been more appraisal, that there has not been more careful assessment of the things which we have set in motion in the legislative branch. That is one particular reason why I think there ought to be an automatic time limit.

The mind is no match with the heart in persuasion constitutionality is no match with compassion

I know how easy it is to say, oh, it is only $20,000,000, or, it is only $80,000,000, or it is only $240,000,000 a year that will be taken out of the pockets of the taxpayer. But where will it finally stop? I do not know.

During a political campaign everyone is concerned with what a candidate will do on this or that question if he is elected except the candidate; he's too busy wondering what he'll do if he isn't elected.

Life is not a static thing. The only people who do not change their minds are incompetents in asylums, and those in cemeteries.

Dirksen's Three Laws of Politics: 1. Get elected. 2. Get re-elected. 3. Don't get mad, get even.

The U.S. Senate - an old scow which doesn't move very fast, but never sinks.

I am a man of principle, and one of my basic principles is flexibility.

When I feel the heat, I see the light.

Whatever the color of a man's skin, we are all mankind. So every denial of freedom, of equal opportunity for a livelihood, or for an education, diminishes me.

Stronger than all the armies is an idea thats time has come. ... The time has come for equality of opportunity in sharing in government, in education, and in employment. It will not be stayed or denied. It is here!