Olympia Snowe Quotes

#1. Well, first let me say that I think health care reform is important. It has to be a priority. And our system is broken. The Finance Committee bill is the best effort yet, due in large measure to the efforts of my colleague, Olympia Snowe, but it's not there yet. It falls short.

Susan Collins

#2. We recognized in 1996 that, with progress in the field of genetics accelerating at a breathtaking pace, we need to ensure that advances in treatment and prevention of disease do not constitute a new basis for discrimination.

Olympia Snowe

#3. You can't have the legislative and executive branch working in a parallel universe ... the partisanship that has gripped Washington has prevented us from dealing with the issues that this country needs to grapple with to determine its future.

Olympia Snowe

#4. In today's world, it is no longer unimaginable to think that business can operate - and even thrive - in an environmentally-friendly manner.

Olympia Snowe

#5. When you can't see, you are only able to judge people by their character and integrity, not by the color of their skin, or by how they look and dress. What's inside a person's heart became my measuring stick. I can hear their hearts in their voices. Nobody can hide that from me.

Ed Lucas

#6. You wait for nothing if not for the word that will burst from the deep like a fruit among branches.

Cesare Pavese

#7. I represent what I think is a traditional Republican ... a limited government, fiscal responsibility, strong national defense, individual freedom and liberty.

Olympia Snowe

#8. Unfortunately, money in politics is an insidious thing - and a loophole in our campaign finance system was taken advantage of with money going to existing or new 527 groups with the sole purpose of influencing the election.

Olympia Snowe

#9. What motivated me to dedicate myself to public service for nearly two-thirds of my life was the chance to produce results for those people who entrusted me to be their voice and their champion.

Olympia Snowe

#10. I have been immeasurably honored to serve the people of Maine for nearly 40 years in public office and for the past 17 years in the United States Senate. It was incredibly difficult to decide that I would not seek a fourth term in the Senate.

Olympia Snowe

#11. The normal is what you find but rarely. The normal is an ideal. It is a picture that one fabricates of the average characteristics of men, and to find them all in a single man is hardly to be expected.

W. Somerset Maugham

#12. The American spirit is stronger than stone and mortar, tougher than steel and glass, and more enduring than any pain or suffering that can be inflicted on our national conscience.

Olympia Snowe

#13. The United States Senate wasn't designed to be a majority-rule institution. It was designed to include and accommodate the rights of the minority in small states as well as large states.

Olympia Snowe

#14. Most breast cancer-related deaths can be prevented through simple and painless preventive measures. A late diagnosis can result in more serious, long-term consequences.

Olympia Snowe

#15. You can never solve a problem without talking to people with whom you disagree. The United States Senate is predicated and based on consensus building. That was certainly the vision of the founding fathers.

Olympia Snowe

#16. What is the purpose of public service? It's to solve problems for the people you represent and certainly in the United States Senate, thinking about your state and thinking about your country as well.

Olympia Snowe

#17. And one way to build trust is to deliver on your promises consistently.

Anonymous

#18. It is time that we provide clarity for our seniors, informing them of the services available that will lower the costs of their prescription drugs and strengthen the overall integrity of the Medicare entitlement.

Olympia Snowe

#19. Hopefully, 21 years later, Judge Roberts possesses an openness with respect to issues of gender-based wage discrimination.

Olympia Snowe

#20. One difficulty in making the Senate work the way it was intended is that America's electorate is increasingly divided into red and blue states, with lawmakers representing just one color or the other.

Olympia Snowe

#21. You want something, you go after it, and you hang on to it

Joya Ryan

#22. Joining the Bipartisan Policy Center is a natural extension of my efforts to achieve results throughout my tenure in Congress, and it provides an ideal means for developing strategies that can garner the broad support necessary to achieve real solutions to the challenges confronting our nation.

Olympia Snowe

#23. My books tend to have a lot of questions in them, and they tend to avoid black and white, for lack of a better metaphor.

Rebecca Stead

#24. In a politically diverse nation, only by finding that common ground can we achieve results for the common good.

Olympia Snowe

#25. I never get bored, because there's always different puzzles, I'm wearing different clothes, there's different contestants, there's different prizes.

Vanna White

#26. Two truths are all too often overshadowed in today's political discourse: Public service is a most honorable pursuit, and so is bipartisanship.

Olympia Snowe

#27. You have to sit with your longing and know that you may not get what you want; you have to encounter the danger of longing for something without the expectation of getting your desire.

Philippa Gregory

#28. When history calls, history calls,

Olympia Snowe

#29. My concept of government's role in people's lives is that it is limited but legitimate, and essential when people have nowhere else to turn.

Olympia Snowe

#30. To suffer for the faith is not a penalty; it is a privilege.

Billy Graham

#31. The media has affected everybody's consciousness much more than most people will admit.

George Michael

#32. What we gave, we have; What we spent, we had; What we left, we lost.

Tryon Edwards

#33. When my first husband died, what I tried to do is to sort of, you know, try to bring some rationale to the circumstance and think about worse circumstances, and also open the door to what other women experienced when all of a sudden they were left alone. And particularly if they had children.

Olympia Snowe

#34. Indeed, we must foster cost-saving competition. And that means joining the marketplace of other industrialized countries - not just for the manufacturers who sell drugs, but for consumers as well.

Olympia Snowe

#35. I've never backed down from a fight and I relish a good debate.

Olympia Snowe

#36. I have worked for three decades as a staunch advocate of building a 'big tent' party that includes both pro-choice and pro-life Republicans.

Olympia Snowe

#37. Confuse was the nurses' word for abuse.

Susanna Kaysen

#38. At an unprecedented time with the worst attack ever on our soil, our President displayed extraordinary determination, leadership and resolve when history was thrust upon him and the United States.

Olympia Snowe