Barbara Jordan

“For all of its uncertainty, we cannot flee the future.”

“A nation is formed by the willingness of each of us to share in the responsibility for upholding the common good.”

“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.”

“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.”

“We are a people in a quandary about the present. We are a people in search of our future. We are a people in search of a national community.”

“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.”

“What the people want is very simple - they want an America as good as its promise.”

“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.”

“Education remains the key to both economic and political empowerment.”

“Earlier today we heard the beginning of the Preamble to the Constitution of the United States. ‘We the people.’ It is a very eloquent beginning. But, when that document was completed on the seventeenth of September in 1787, I was not included in that ‘We, the people.’ I felt somehow for many years that George Washington and Alexander Hamilton just left me out by mistake. But, through the process of amendment, interpretation, and court decision, I have finally been included in ‘We, the people.’”

“My faith in the Constitution is whole; it is complete; it is total. I am not going to sit here and be an idle spectator to the diminution, the subversion, the destruction of the Constitution.”

“A spirit of harmony will survive in America only if each of us remembers that we share a common destiny; if each of us remembers, when bitterness and self-interest seem to prevail, that we share a common destiny.”

“What people want is simple. They want an America as good as its promise.”

“You need a core inside you—a core that directs everything you do. You confer with it for guidance. It is not negotiable.”

“This country can ill afford to continue to function using less than half of its human resources, less than half its kinetic energy, less than half its brain power.”

“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.”

“Those who hold the public trust must adhere to the highest ethical standards there are. The job requires it, and the public must demand it.”

“There is no obstacle in the path of young people who are poor or members of minority groups that hard work and preparation cannot cure.”

“It was immigration that taught us, it does not matter where you came from, or who your parents were. What counts is who you are.”

“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.”