Barbara Jordan - Barbara Jordan (1979)

23 Sourced Quotes

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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
We are a party of innovation. 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
What the people want is very simple. They want an America as good as its promise.

Barbara Jordan
It is reason, and not passion, which must guide our deliberations, guide our debate, and guide our decision.

Barbara Jordan
In other times, I could stand here and give this kind of exposition on the beliefs of the Democratic Party and that would be enough. But today that is not enough. People want more.

Barbara Jordan
The stakes... are too high for government to be a spectator sport.

Barbara Jordan
We believe that the people are the source of all governmental power; that the authority of the people is to be extended, not restricted.

Barbara Jordan
If you had to work in the environment of Washington, D.C., as I do, and watch those men who are so imprisoned and so confined by their eighteenth-century thought patterns, you would know that if anybody is going to be liberated, it's men who must be liberated in this country.

Barbara Jordan
Even as I stand here and admit that we have made mistakes I still believe that as the people of America sit in judgment on each party, they will recognize that our mistakes were mistakes of the heart. They'll recognize that.

Barbara Jordan
But this is the great danger America faces. That we will cease to be one nation and become instead a collection of interest groups: city against suburb, region against region, individual against individual. Each seeking to satisfy private wants.

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 must not become the new puritans and reject our society. We must address and master the future together. It can be done if we restore the belief that we share a sense of national community, that we share a common national endeavor. It can be done.

Barbara Jordan
If the society today allows wrongs to go unchallenged, the impression is created that those wrongs have the approval of the majority.

Barbara Jordan
The citizens of America expect more. They deserve and they want more than a recital of problems.

Barbara Jordan
More is required of public officials than slogans and handshakes and press releases. More is required. We must hold ourselves strictly accountable. We must provide the people with a vision of the future.

Barbara Jordan
Just remember the world is not a playground but a schoolroom. Life is not a holiday but an education. One eternal lesson for us all: to teach us how better we should love.

Barbara Jordan
There is no executive order; there is no law that can require the American people to form a national community. This we must do as individuals and if we do it as individuals, there is no President of the United States who can veto that decision.

Barbara Jordan
We call ourselves public servants but I'll tell you this: we as public servants must set an example for the rest of the nation. It is hypocritical for the public official to admonish and exhort the people to uphold the common good.

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
If we promise as public officials, we must deliver. If we as public officials propose, we must produce.

Barbara Jordan
I have confidence that we can form this kind of national community.

Barbara Jordan
Let's all understand that these guiding principles cannot be discarded for short-term political gains. They represent what this country is all about. They are indigenous to the American idea. And these are principles which are not negotiable.

Barbara Jordan
What we have to do is strike a balance between the idea that government should do everything and the idea, the belief, that government ought to do nothing. Strike a balance.

Barbara Jordan