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    Rayburn, Sam


You’ll never get mixed up if you simply tell the truth. Then you don’t have to remember what you have said, and you never forget what you have said.

Sam Rayburn (1882-1961) American lawyer and politician
(Attributed)

Private conversation quoted in W. B. Ragsdale, “An Old Friend Writes of Rayburn,” U.S. News & World Report (23 Oct 1961)
 
Added on 19-Dec-07 | Last updated 19-Dec-07
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You’ll never get mixed up if you simply tell the truth. Then you don’t have to remember what you have said, and you never forget what you have said.

Sam Rayburn (1882-1961) American lawyer and politician
(Attributed)

In W. B. Ragsdale, "An Old Friend Writes of Rayburn", U.S. News & World Report (23 Oct 1961).
 
Added on 28-May-13 | Last updated 28-May-13
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Don’t try to go too fast. Learn your job. Don’t ever talk until you know what you’re talking about. … If you want to get along, go along.

Sam Rayburn (1882-1961) American lawyer and politician
(Attributed)

Advice to freshmen Representatives.
 
Added on 4-Jun-13 | Last updated 4-Jun-13
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A jackass can kick a barn down, but it takes a carpenter to build one.

Sam Rayburn (1882-1961) American lawyer and politician
Comment (c. 1953)

Said during a filmed conversation with reporters, reported in S. Rayburn, Speak, Mister Speaker (1978)
 
Added on 21-May-13 | Last updated 21-May-13
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It has always been my ambition since childhood to live such a life that one day my fellow citizens would call me to membership in this popular branch of the greatest lawmaking body in the world. Out of their confidence and partiality they have done this. It is now my sole purpose here to help enact such wise and just laws that our common country will by virtue of these laws be a happier and a more prosperous country. I have always dreamed of a country which I believe this should be and will be, and that is one in which the citizenship is an educated and patriotic people, not swayed by passion and prejudice, and a country that shall know no East, no West, no North, no South, but inhabited by a people liberty loving, patriotic, happy, and prosperous, with its lawmakers having no other purpose than to write such just laws as shall in the years to come be of service to human kind yet unborn.

Sam Rayburn (1882-1961) American lawyer and politician
Maiden speech. House of Representatives (6 May 1913)

Congressional Record, vol. 50, p. 1249.
 
Added on 14-May-13 | Last updated 14-May-13
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You cannot be a leader, and ask other people to follow you, unless you know how to follow, too.

Sam Rayburn (1882-1961) American lawyer and politician
Quoted in The Leadership of Speaker Sam Rayburn, Collected Tributes of His Congressional Colleagues, House Doc. 87-247 (1961)
 
Added on 11-Jun-13 | Last updated 3-Nov-20
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A jackass can kick a barn down, but it takes a carpenter to build one.

Sam Rayburn (1882-1961) American lawyer and politician
Remark before reporters (c. 1953)

Quoted in Dulaney and Phillips, Speak, Mister Speaker (1978)
 
Added on 1-Feb-04 | Last updated 1-Feb-04
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