Tsongas Quotes

#1. You are Americans. You love this country. Together we are entrusted with the principles that represent mankind's greatest political and social achievement.

Paul Tsongas

#2. I came from a disadvantaged home. They were Republicans.

Paul Tsongas

#3. This land, this water, this air, this planet - this is our legacy to our young.

Paul Tsongas

#4. I was an officer in my student council.

Niki Tsongas

#5. My father's generation gave to my generation a land of wealth and purpose and world economic dominance.

Paul Tsongas

#6. You are part of that horrid expression, the best and the brightest. It can be a terrible burden if you let it be, but it is the great challenge of your time. And being a warrior in that challenge should be wondrous.

Paul Tsongas

#7. Our destiny is greatness and we must return to its fulfillment.

Paul Tsongas

#8. I am an American. I love this country.

Paul Tsongas

#9. When George Bush used the Willie Horton ad, he knew what he was doing.

Paul Tsongas

#10. America is the sum of all our journeys as we search for our national community and our national culture.

Paul Tsongas

#11. We are a continuum. Just as we reach back to our ancestors for our fundamental values, so we, as guardians of that legacy, must reach ahead to our children and their children. And we do so with a sense of sacredness in that reaching.

Paul Tsongas

#12. There are wives who are very involved with their husbands' offices and really take their responsibility seriously in terms of issues and things like that. I was never very comfortable with being part of that.

Niki Tsongas

#13. Clearly-drawn front lines have become a thing of the past due to complex locations with ubiquitous enemy threats.

Niki Tsongas

#14. Journey with me to a true commitment to our environment. Journey with me to the serenity of leaving to our children a planet in equilibrium.

Paul Tsongas

#15. I have pretty much made up my mind to do this.

Paul Tsongas

#16. It was a myth that's often perpetuated at commencement that holds that only hope and promise lie beyond the halls of academe. Don't worry, be happy. Everything is fine.

Paul Tsongas

#17. Our only weapons in this war of your lifetime are the weapons of the mind.

Paul Tsongas

#18. That sense of sacredness, that thinking in generations, must begin with reverence for this earth.

Paul Tsongas

#19. Body armor is meant to fit snug to the body to stop shrapnel and absorb a bullet's impact. Armor designed for a boxier male frame does not fit properly on the overwhelming majority of females, who have a very different stature and body type than their male counterparts.

Niki Tsongas

#20. I want to deploy the leadership to meet the challenges that face us and to restore America's greatness.

Paul Tsongas

#21. Constant and pervasive danger makes agile movement a high priority for all soldiers, whether they are assigned directly to combat or not.

Niki Tsongas

#22. People say, 'What if your name was Niki Smith?' Well, if Niki Smith lived the life I've lived, it would have great bearing.

Niki Tsongas

#23. Lowell is my home. It is where I drew my first breath. It is where I will always derive a sense of place and a sense of belonging

Paul Tsongas

#24. Don't fear your mortality, because it is this very mortality that gives meaning and depth and poignancy to all the days that will be granted to you.

Paul Tsongas

#25. I wish I had spent more time at the office.

Paul Tsongas

#26. Democrats love employees, it's employers they hate.

Paul Tsongas

#27. Breastroke is an athletic event, butterfly is a political statement.

Paul Tsongas

#28. The cold war is over; Japan won.

Paul Tsongas

#29. Seven and half years ago I began my own journey. For me and my family it was a time of adversity. But during that adversity I derived a deeper faith. And born out of that adversity was a commitment to devote myself to those people and to those issues that truly matter to me.

Paul Tsongas

#30. Lightened body armor, which the military has made progress on, would mean increased safety and reduced risk for soldiers like the sergeant and the colonel.

Niki Tsongas

#31. A commencement is a time of joy. It is also a time of melancholy. But then again, so is life.

Paul Tsongas

#32. No one is immune from the larger events of his or her time - the Depression, World War II, civil rights, Vietnam, the spring of 1989 in China. These events intrude upon our lives and radically affect our directions.

Paul Tsongas

#33. In this era of the global village, the tide of democracy is running. And it will not cease, not in China, not in South Africa, not in any corner of this earth, where the simple idea of democracy and freedom has taken root.

Paul Tsongas

#34. No one on his deathbed ever said, I wish I had spent more time on my business.

Paul Tsongas

#35. From a viable economy to the full funding of Headstart, from a clean environment to true equality for women, from a strong military to a commitment to racial brotherhood, from schools that are honored to streets free of excessive violence.

Paul Tsongas

#36. You cannot be pro-jobs and anti-business at the same time. You cannot love employment and hate employers.

Paul Tsongas

#37. Thinking in generations also means enabling our young to have a decent standard of living.

Paul Tsongas

#38. America is hope. It is compassion. It is excellence. It is valor.

Paul Tsongas

#39. That's a good question. Let me try to evade you.

Paul Tsongas

#40. Two hundred years ago, our Founding Fathers gave us a democracy. It was based upon the simple, yet noble, idea that government derives its validity from the consent of the governed.

Paul Tsongas

#41. Let's try winning and see what it feels like. If we don't like it, we can go back to our traditions.

Paul Tsongas

#42. We should not be making near-term decisions with long-term consequences without robustly debating these questions and fully considering the substantial and unpredictable risks of these actions.

Niki Tsongas