Millicent Fenwick Quotes

22 Sourced Quotes

A code of behavior is an inevitable part of life in any community, and if we hadn't inherited ours, we should have had to invent one.

Millicent Fenwick
The money that is spent in elections is absolutely unconscionable - even if it's private money. It's true that one's not corrupted by the expenditure of one's own money, but to some extent the system is. We cannot have a system in which the only people you can count on for a vote that doesn't look as though it might be a vote for a special-interest group are people with enormous fortunes.

Millicent Fenwick
If there is one thing the past years have taught us, it is the importance of a keen and high sense of honor in those who handle our governmental affairs.

Millicent Fenwick
Like life and people, it is full of paradoxes. Etiquette is based on tradition, and yet it can change. Its ramifications are trivialities, but its roots are in great principles.

Millicent Fenwick
I have come to believe that the one thing people cannot bear is a sense of injustice. Poverty, cold, even hunger, are more bearable than injustice.

Millicent Fenwick
Everyone in America seems to be joining an organization of some kind, and in Congress one hears from them all.

Millicent Fenwick
You must be drawn, not driven. When you are, you forget about lunch.... Success is not the measure of a human being; effort is. What's important is how much of your energy and zeal go into it.

Millicent Fenwick
Since Hitler came to power I have never really trusted government, and it is because don't trust government that I am a Republican. Democrats don't mind mandatory laws, regulations and ordinances.... Republicans tend to ask 'Why? Is the situation such that we must order people around?'

Millicent Fenwick
The only people who should be in government are those who care more about people than they do about power.

Millicent Fenwick
The essence of good taste is a sense of values, and a sense of values is the pivotal point of good living.

Millicent Fenwick
Any change in customs... takes generations to accomplish, and must come about by general consent. Even a superficial study of sociology shows the futility of past efforts to make a lasting change in manners by an act of will or authority.

Millicent Fenwick
I was so hurt when I got to Congress. All the media would say was 'pipe-smoking grandmother'. And I would say, 'For God's sake, hard-working grandmother, same number of syllables.' But I couldn't persuade them.

Millicent Fenwick
Good behavior is everybody's business, and good taste can be everyone's goal.

Millicent Fenwick
One longs for a voice in the middle, and the mail often brings such balanced and refreshing views. In fact, the overwhelming majority of those who write me belong to this sensible persuasion — able to see a little right and a little wrong on both sides of many questions.

Millicent Fenwick
One of the keys to our present definition of good taste is that it is better to be kind than to be 'correct.' There is no situation in which it is smart to be nasty.

Millicent Fenwick
In our times, significantly, the three outstanding voices against violence have been silenced by murder — Mahatma Gandhi in India, Archbishop Romero in El Salvador, and Dr. Martin Luther King, here at home.

Millicent Fenwick
To her male colleague who objected to women's rights legislation, saying 'I've always thought of women as kissable, cuddly, and smelling good':
That's what I feel about men. I only hope you haven't been disappointed as often as I have.

Millicent Fenwick
Everyone asks me whether I'm a liberal, a maverick, a neoconservative or whatever. I simply try to stick to what I believe in.

Millicent Fenwick
A sound marriage softens every blow; increases every success. Bright, dumb; rich, poor; success, failure what makes life pleasurable is a successful marriage.

Millicent Fenwick
Economics is not a science, in the sense that a policy can be repeatedly applied under similar conditions and will repeatedly produce similar results.

Millicent Fenwick
There is hardly a facet of life that is now free of some sort of federal action.

Millicent Fenwick
The ideal attitude which should underlie all women's manners expresses kindness, gentleness, goodwill, sensitive understanding, self-respect and, when it is appropriate, deference.

Millicent Fenwick