Contents -AUTHOR INDEX -KEYWORD INDEX -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Respectfully Quoted: A Dictionary of Quotations. 1989.

Foreword

<PARA=”1″>I have heard that someone once asked Woodrow Wilson how long it took him to write a speech. He replied, “It depends. If I am to speak ten minutes, I need a week for preparation. If fifteen minutes, three days. If half an hour, two days. If an hour, I am ready now.”<PARA=”2″>We would like to think that with the quotations in this book, we would all be “ready now” for the long ones, but that these quotations would make even our ten-minute versions more precise, more thoughtful, and more perfectly shaped to express our intentions.<PARA=”3″>The Congressional Research Service has been responding to Congressional inquiries about quotations for nearly seventy-five years now, and during this time we have searched out many of the most popular statements many times over. But we have tracked down many others that had never been identified before but which had a pith and point equal to the more traditional thoughts. The 2100 statements included in this book are the best of the latter.<PARA=”4″>We hope they will be helpful to the Members of Congress in their task of expressing our national purpose and in their debating the public issues before the Legislature. Having been requested by a Member or his staff, and then having been located by the librarians of the Congressional Research Service, we believe they have a wide usefulness and should be shared with successive generations of legislators—and, in turn, with the broadest possible audience.<PARA=”5″>We hope you will find them of value.