Barbara Jordan
Barbara Jordan
Barbara Charline Jordanwas a lawyer, educator, an American politician, and a leader of the Civil Rights movement. A Democrat, she was the first African American elected to the Texas Senate after Reconstruction, the first Southern African American female elected to the United States House of Representatives, the first known lesbian elected to the United States Congress, and the first African-American woman to deliver a keynote address at a Democratic National Convention. She received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, among numerous...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPolitician
Date of Birth21 February 1936
CityHouston, TX
CountryUnited States of America
If you're going to play the game [politics] properly, you'd better know every rule.
If youre going to play the game properly, youd better know every rule.
All my growth and development led me to believe that if you really do the right thing, and if you play by the rules, and if you?ve got good enough, solid judgment and common sense, that you?re going to be able to do whatever you want to do with your life.
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.
I never intended to become a run-of-the-mill person.
One thing is clear to me: We, as human beings, must be willing to accept people who are different from ourselves.
I believe that women have a capacity for understanding and compassion which man structurally does not have, does not have it because he cannot have it. He's just incapable of it.
For all of its uncertainty, we cannot flee the future.
We have made mistakes. In our haste to do all things for all people, we did not foresee the full consequences of our actions. And when the people raised their voices, we didn't hear. But our deafness was only a temporary condition, and not an irreversible condition.
...for the system to be credible, people actually have to be deported at the end of the process.
I have confidence that we can form this kind of national community.
Let each person do his or her part. If one citizen is unwilling to participate, all of us are going to suffer. For the American idea, though it is shared by all of us, is realized in each one of us.
The imperative is to define what is right and do it.
My faith in the Constitution is whole, it is complete, it is total, and I am not going to sit here and be an idle spectator to the diminuation, the subversion, the destruction of the Constitution. It is reason and not passion which must guide our deliberations, guide our debate, and guide our decision.