United States Congress

The United States Congress is the bicameral legislature of the federal government of the United States of America, consisting of two houses, the Senate and the House of Representatives. Both senators and representatives are chosen through direct election.

Sourced

• The House is composed of very good men, not shining, but honest and reasonably well-informed, and in time they will be found to improve, and not to be much inferior in eloquence, science, and dignity, to the British Commons. They are patriotic enough, and I believe there are more stupid (as well as more shining) people in the latter, in proportion.
  • Fisher Ames, letter to George Richard Minot (May 27, 1789); reported in Works of Fisher Ames (1854), ed. Seth Ames, vol. 1, p. 45.

• Congress seems drugged and inert most of the time. Even when the problems it ignores build up to crises and erupt in strikes, riots, and demonstrations, it has not moved. Its idea of meeting a problem is to hold hearings or, in extreme cases, to appoint a commission.
  • Shirley Chisholm, Unbought and Unbossed‎ (1970), p. 104.

• A few years ago Gen. Francis Marion Cockrell, for thirty consecutive years a prominent Senator from Missouri, denominated the United States Senate as “the greatest legislative body in the world,” whereupon Senator John C. Spooner, of Wisconsin, an eminent constitutional lawyer and considerable of a wit, said: “The Senate is not the greatest legislative body in the world. It is one of the branches of, I think, perhaps the greatest legislative body in the world, and the Senate may be the greatest part of the greatest legislative body in the world. I am not disposed to dispute that. We all admit that ourselves.”
  • Champ Clark, My Quarter Century of American Politics, vol. 1, p. 190 (1920). Reported as nverified in Respectfully Quoted: A Dictionary of Quotations (1989).

• I am now here in Congress... I am at liberty to vote as my conscience and judgment dictates to be right, without the yoke of any party on me, or the driver at my heels, with his whip in hand, commanding me to ge-wo-haw, just at his pleasure. Look at my arms, you will find no party hand-cuff on them!
  • Davy Crockett, letter (28 January 1834), reported in A Narrative of the Life of David Crockett (1834), p. 113, final paragraph.

• Too often critics seem more intent on seeking new ways to alter Congress than to truly learn how it functions. They might well profit from the advice of Thomas Huxley, who said a century ago: "Sit down before facts as a little child, be prepared to give up every preconceived notion — or you shall learn nothing."
  • Gerald Ford, Address at the University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida (3 November 1966); published in Gerald R. Ford,Selected Speeches (1973) edited by Michael V. Doyle

• I know well the coequal role of the Congress in our constitutional process. I love the House of Representatives. I revere the traditions of the Senate despite my too-short internship in that great body. As President, within the limits of basic principles, my motto toward the Congress is communication, conciliation, compromise, and cooperation.
  • Gerald Ford, Address to a joint session of Congress (August 12, 1974); in Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Gerald R. Ford, 1974, pp. 6–7.

• Congress is, after all, not a body of laymen unfamiliar with the commonplaces of our law. This legislation was the formulation of the two Judiciary Committees, all of whom are lawyers, and the Congress is predominately a lawyers' body.
  • Felix Frankfurter, Callanan v. United States, 364 U.S. 587, 594 (1961).

• Congress is so strange. A man gets up to speak and says nothing. Nobody listens—and then everybody disagrees.
  • Boris Marshalov, a Russian observer, after visiting the House of Representatives; reported in Senator Alexander Wiley, Laughing with Congress (1947), p. 58.

• Congress is so strange. A man gets up to speak and says nothing. Nobody listens. And when he sits down, everybody disagrees.
  • Attributed to Russian actor Boris Marshalov after visiting the House of Representatives
    • Fuller, Edmund (1942). Thesaurus of Anecdotes. Crown Publishers. p. 343. 
    • Young, Roland (1943). This Is Congress. A. A. Knopf. p. 158. 
  • Attributed to Will Rogers
    • Time–Life Books (1969). This Fabulous Century: 1910–1920. Time–Life. p. 263. 

• I could study all my life and not think up half the amount of funny things they can think of in one Session of Congress.
  • Will Rogers, in Will Rogers' Weekly Articles: The Coolidge Years, 1925-1927‎ (1981), p. 8.

• So when all the yielding and objections is over, the other Senator said, "I object to the remarks of a professional joker being put into the Congressional Record." Taking a dig at me, see? They didn't want any outside fellow contributing. Well, he had me wrong. Compared to them I'm an amateur, and the thing about my jokes is that they don't hurt anybody. You can say they're not funny or they're terrible or they're good or whatever it is, but they don't do no harm. But with Congress — every time they make a joke it's a law. And every time they make a law it's a joke.
  • Will Rogers, quoted in P. J. O'Brien, Will Rogers, Ambassador of Good Will, Prince of Wit and Wisdom, 1935, ch. 9, pp. 156–57 [1]

• I have come to the conclusion that one useless man is called a disgrace, that two are called a law firm, and that three or more become a congress.
  • Peter Stone, 1776, A Musical Play, scene I. John Adams speaks these lines to open the play.

• It could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no distinctly native American criminal class except Congress.
  • Mark Twain, Following the Equator (1897), vol. 1 (vol. 5 of The Writings of Mark Twain), chapter 8, epigraph, p. 98.

• I think I can say, and say with pride, that we have legislatures that bring higher prices than any in the world.
  • Mark Twain, reported in Caroline Thomas Harnsberger, Mark Twain at Your Fingertips‎ (1948), p. 364.

• Suppose you were a member of Congress. And suppose you were an idiot. But I repeat myself.
  • Mark Twain, draft manuscript (c.1881), quoted by Albert Bigelow Paine in Mark Twain: A Biography (1912).

• Congress in session is Congress on public exhibition, whilst Congress in its committee-rooms is Congress at work.
  • Woodrow Wilson, Congressional Government, A Study in American Politics (1885; republished 1981), chapter 2, p. 69 (1981).

Author unknown

• Since pro means the opposite of con, can you give me an illustration? Progress and Congress.
  • Reported in Louis Untermeyer, A Treasury of Laughter (1946), p. 655. Variously reported in other phrasings, such as, "If pro is the opposite of con, then isn't progress the opposite of congress?"

• During the American Revolution, George Washington used to call out for "beef, beef, beef," but the Continental Congress called out for "pork, pork, pork."
  • Reported in Respectfully Quoted: A Dictionary of Quotations (1989) as a comment quoted by Representative Clarence Cannon.

• One of the standing jokes of Congress is that the new Congressman always spends the first week wondering how he got there and the rest of the time wondering how the other members got there.
  • Reported in the Saturday Evening Post (November 4, 1899), p. 356.