And the president is all wrong when he maintains that a nominee should have an up-or-down vote. The Constitution doesn't say that. The Constitution doesn't say that that nominee shall have any vote at all. There doesn't have to even be a vote.
– Robert Byrd
As I see it, Iraq is only one facet - albeit the bloodiest one - of a constellation of dangerous challenges facing the United States today.
– Robert Byrd
Congress is not an ATM.
– Robert Byrd
Hitler never abandoned the cloak of legality; he recognized the enormous psychological value of having the law on his side. Instead, he turned the law inside out and made illegality legal.
– Robert Byrd
I won't mince words - I am profoundly worried that the President may have a hidden agenda for dealing with Iran and Syria, and I am equally worried that the Administration has no agenda to manage what appears to be a worsening nuclear crisis in North Korea.
– Robert Byrd
It [the Senate] handed everything to a president, by way of using the military forces of this country where he would, when he would, how he would, as long as it was connected with Iraq. And that's a blotch upon this country and the Senate.
– Robert Byrd
It is money, money, money! Not ideas, not principles, but money that reigns supreme in American politics.
– Robert Byrd
One's family is the most important thing in life. I look at it this way: One of these days I'll be over in a hospital somewhere with four walls around me. And the only people who'll be with me will be my family.
– Robert Byrd
Our ideals of freedom, set forth and realized in our Constitution, are our greatest export to the world.
– Robert Byrd
Some events define and shape history with the force of plate tectonics, moving the world onto a new path. On September 17, 1787, just such an event occurred when the Constitution of the United States was signed.
– Robert Byrd
That's what the Senate is about. It's the last bastion of minority rights, where a minority can be heard, where a minority can stand on its feet, one individual if necessary, and speak until he falls into the dust.
– Robert Byrd
The ongoing strife in Iraq, and the billions of dollars that the President is seeking to continue that war, give me little comfort that this Administration has learned from its mistakes in Iraq.
– Robert Byrd
This war is not necessary. We are truly sleepwalking through history.
– Robert Byrd
To contemplate war is to think about the most horrible of human experiences.
– Robert Byrd
We, unlike Nazi Germany or Mussolini's Italy, have never stopped being a nation of laws, not of men. But witness how men with motives and a majority can manipulate law to cruel and unjust ends.