Quotes by Robert Byrd

About Robert Byrd:

Robert Carlyle Byrd was a United States Senator from West Virginia. A member of the Democratic Party, Byrd served as a U.S. Representative from 1953 until 1959 and as a U.S. Senator from 1959 to 2010. He was the longest-serving U.S. Senator and, at the time of his death, the longest-serving member in the history of the United States Congress. (In June 2013, his record was surpassed by U.S. Representative John Dingell of Michigan). Byrd, however, still holds the record as the longest-serving member of Congress to serve in both houses.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

I have been in Congress for more than a half century. I have lived through times of fear and times of hope. Of despair and of achievement. I have seen our government at its best, but today I fear that we see our government at its worst.

Robert Byrd

Congress is not an ATM.

Robert Byrd

And the president is all wrong when he maintains that a nominee should have an up-or-down vote. The Constitution doesn't say that. The Constitution doesn't say that that nominee shall have any vote at all. There doesn't have to even be a vote.

Robert Byrd

That's what the Senate is about. It's the last bastion of minority rights, where a minority can be heard, where a minority can stand on its feet, one individual if necessary, and speak until he falls into the dust.

Robert Byrd

Mission accomplished? The mission in Iraq, as laid out by President Bush and Vice President Cheney, has failed.

Robert Byrd

It was the separation of powers upon which the framers placed their hopes for the preservation of the people's liberties. Despite this heritage, the congress has been in too many cases more than willing to walk away from its constitutional powers.

Robert Byrd

It is the Constitution of the United States that has been undermined, undercut, and is under attack. It is the American people's liberties that is in jeopardy. That is why I wrote 'Losing America.'

Robert Byrd

I have never seen such extreme partisanship, such bitter partisanship, and such forgetfulness of the fate of our fathers and of the Constitution.

Robert Byrd

To the American people I say, awaken to what is happening. It is the duty of each citizen to be vigilant, to protect liberty, to speak out, left and right and disagree lest be trampled underfoot by misguided zealotry and extreme partisanship.

Robert Byrd

Our ideals of freedom, set forth and realized in our Constitution, are our greatest export to the world.

Robert Byrd

One's family is the most important thing in life. I look at it this way: One of these days I'll be over in a hospital somewhere with four walls around me. And the only people who'll be with me will be my family.

Robert Byrd

This war is not necessary. We are truly sleepwalking through history.

Robert Byrd

Hitler never abandoned the cloak of legality; he recognized the enormous psychological value of having the law on his side. Instead, he turned the law inside out and made illegality legal.

Robert Byrd

Is it any wonder, why the approval ratings of the Congress go up every time we go into recess?

Robert Byrd

It is money, money, money! Not ideas, not principles, but money that reigns supreme in American politics.

Robert Byrd

The money the president wants to borrow for Iraq will come directly out of the American taxpayer wallets in the form of Medicare and Social Security receipts. That's your money.

Robert Byrd

We, unlike Nazi Germany or Mussolini's Italy, have never stopped being a nation of laws, not of men. But witness how men with motives and a majority can manipulate law to cruel and unjust ends.

Robert Byrd

The ongoing strife in Iraq, and the billions of dollars that the President is seeking to continue that war, give me little comfort that this Administration has learned from its mistakes in Iraq.

Robert Byrd

To contemplate war is to think about the most horrible of human experiences.

Robert Byrd

Author Bio

  • NameRobert Byrd
  • DescriptionUnited States Senator from West Virginia
  • BornNovember 20, 1917
  • DiedJune 28, 2010
  • CountryUnited States Of America
  • ProfessionPolitician; Lawyer; Historian; Fiddler
  • AwardsFour Freedoms Award - Freedom From Fear