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Everett Dirksen

American politician (1896–1969)

Everett McKinley Dirksen (4 January 1896 – 7 September 1969) was an American politician. A Republican, he represented Illinois in the United States House of Representatives and the United States Senate. As Senate Minority Leader from 1959 until his death in 1969, he played a highly visible and key role in the politics of the 1960s. He helped write and pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Civil Rights Act of 1968, both landmark pieces of legislation during the civil rights movement. He was also one of the Senate's strongest supporters of the Vietnam War.

I am a man of fixed and unbending principles, the first of which is to be flexible at all times.

Quotes

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Stronger than all the armies is an idea that's time has come. … The time has come for equality of opportunity in sharing in government, in education, and in employment. It will not be stayed or denied. It is here!
 
A billion here, a billion there, pretty soon, you're talking real money.
  • I am a man of fixed and unbending principles, the first of which is to be flexible at all times.
    • As quoted in Caught Between the Dog and the Fireplug, or, How to Survive Public Service (2001) by Kenneth H. Ashworth, p. 11
  • When I face an issue of great import that cleaves both constituents and colleagues, I always take the same approach. I engage in deep deliberation and quiet contemplation. I wait to the last available minute and then I always vote with the losers. Because, my friend, the winners never remember and the losers never forget.
    • As quoted in Business Wit & Wisdom (2005) by Richard S. Zera, p. 164

1960s

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  • There are gentle men in whom gentility finally destroys whatever of iron there was in their souls. There are iron men in whom the iron corroded whatever gentility they possessed. There are men—not many to be sure—in whom the gentility and the iron were preserved in proper balance, each of these attributes to be summoned up as the occasion requires. Such a man was Harry Byrd.
    • Statement in tribute to Harry F. Byrd upon his passing, quoted decades later to pay tribute to Harry F. Byrd Jr. by Frank B. Atkinson, Richmond Times-Dispatch, August 11, 2013, "Gentility and Iron, The Legacy of Harry F. Byrd Jr."
  • We have been through this biennial convulsion four or five different times over the past 10 or 12 years, and now it appears that we are going through this quiet agony all over again.
    • Remarks in the Senate on a resolution to amend Senate Rule 22 (cloture), Congressional Record (January 11, 1967), vol. 113, p. 182


Misattributed

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  • A billion here, a billion there, pretty soon, you're talking real money.
    • Although often quoted, it seems Dirksen never actually said this. The Dirksen Congressional Research Center made an extensive search when fully 25% of enquiries to them were about the quotation. They could find Dirksen did say "a billion here, a billion there", and things close to that, but not the "pretty soon you're talking real money" part. They had one gentleman report to them he had asked Dirksen about it on an airplane trip and received the reply: "Oh, I never said that. A newspaper fella misquoted me once, and I thought it sounded so good that I never bothered to deny it."
    • The Yale Book of Quotations cites a similar statement in The New York Times on Jan. 10, 1938: "Well, now, about this new budget. It’s a billion here and a billion there, and by and by it begins to mount up into money." [1]

Quotes about Dirksen

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You're worthy of the Land of Lincoln. And a man from Illinois is going to pass the bill, and I'll see that you get proper attention and credit. ~ Lyndon B. Johnson
  • When Daniel Webster died more than a century ago, a man who differed strongly with him on many public issues rose in Congress to say this in eulogy: "Our great men are the common property of the country." Everett Dirksen, of Illinois, was and is the "common property" of all the 50 States. Senator Dirksen belonged to all of us because he always put his country first. He was an outspoken partisan, he was an individualist of the first rank, but he put his nation before himself and before his party. He came to the Nation's Capital in 1932, and his public service spanned an era of enormous change in the life of our country. He played a vital part in that change. That is why it is so difficult to think of the Washington scene, of this Capitol, without him. Only his fellow legislators, the Senators and Representatives who have gathered here today and who mourn his loss across the Nation, know the full extent of his contribution to the process of governing this country. They know the time and concern he put into their bills, their causes, their problems. They know another side to Everett Dirksen--the side in the committees and behind the scenes where so much of the hard work and the hard bargaining is done, where there is so little that makes headlines and so much that makes legislation. Through four Presidencies, through the adult life of most Americans living today, Everett Dirksen has had a hand in shaping almost every important law that affects our lives.
  • Little known by many today is the fact that it was Republican Senator Everett Dirksen from Illinois, not Johnson, who pushed through the 1964 Civil Rights Act. In fact, Dirksen was instrumental to the passage of civil rights legislation in 1957, 1960, 1964, 1965 and 1968. Dirksen wrote the language for the 1965 Voting Rights Act. Dirksen also crafted the language for the Civil Rights Act of 1968 which prohibited discrimination in housing.
  • Democrats today ignore the pivotal role played by Senator Dirksen in obtaining passage of the landmark 1964 Civil Rights Act, while heralding President Johnson as a civil rights advocate for signing the bill. The chief opponents of the 1964 Civil Rights Act were Democrat Senators Sam Ervin, Albert Gore, Sr., father of former U.S. Vice President Al Gore, and Robert Byrd who filibustered against the bill for 14 straight hours before the final vote.
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