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Alan K. Simpson

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If you have integrity, nothing else matters. If you don't have integrity, nothing else matters.

Alan Kooi Simpson (born 2 September 1931) is an American politician and member of the Republican Party, who represented Wyoming in the United States Senate (1979–97). He also served as co-chair of the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform with Democratic Party co-chair Erskine Bowles of North Carolina.

Quotes

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  • There is no "slippery slope" toward loss of liberty, only a long staircase where each step down must first be tolerated by the American people and their leaders.
    • As quoted in The New York Times (26 September 1982).
  • If you have integrity, nothing else matters. If you don't have integrity, nothing else matters.
    • As quoted in Eyewitness to Power (2001) by David Gergen.
  • As a lifelong Republican who served in the Army in Germany, I believe it is critical that we review — and overturn — the ban on gay service in the military. I voted for "don't ask, don't tell." But much has changed since 1993.
    My thinking shifted when I read that the military was firing translators because they are gay. According to the Government Accountability Office, more than 300 language experts have been fired under "don't ask, don't tell," including more than 50 who are fluent in Arabic. This when even Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice recently acknowledged the nation's "foreign language deficit" and how much our government needs Farsi and Arabic speakers. Is there a "straight" way to translate Arabic? Is there a "gay" Farsi? My God, we'd better start talking sense before it is too late. We need every able-bodied, smart patriot to help us win this war.
  • I have had the rich satisfaction of knowing and working with many openly gay and lesbian Americans, and I have come to realize that "gay" is an artificial category when it comes to measuring a man or woman's on-the-job performance or commitment to shared goals. It says little about the person. Our differences and prejudices pale next to our historic challenge.
    • "Bigotry That Hurts Our Military" in The Washington Post (14 May 2007).
  • So the punchline for George Bush is this, you would have wanted him on your side. He never lost his sense of humor. Humor is the universal solvent against the abrasive elements of life. That’s what humor is. He never hated anyone — he knew what his mother and my mother always knew: hatred corrodes the container it’s carried in.


Misattributed

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We've got only one thing to say: "Klaatu barada nikto."
  • Any education that matters is liberal. All the saving truths, all the healing graces that distinguish a good education from a bad one or a full education from a half-empty one are contained in that word.
    • Alan Simpson (b. 1912), an English born educator who became a U.S. citizen in 1954, in "The Marks of an Educated Man" in Readings for Liberal Education (1962), edited by by Louis Glenn Locke, William Merriam Gibson, and George Warren Arms, p. 47.
  • An educated man is thoroughly inoculated against humbug, thinks for himself and tries to give his thoughts, in speech or on paper, some style.
    • Alan Simpson (b. 1912), on becoming president of Vassar College, as quoted in Newsweek (1 July 1963)

Quotes about Simpson

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