Edward Brooke Quotes

I deplored a system that made it more profitable not to work than to work. I wanted to help change all that.

My entire life has been devoted to breaking down barriers, to finding common ground.

In elective politics, it’s up or out. You go up the ladder, or you get out of the game.

You can’t say the negro left the Republican party; the negro feels he was evicted from the Republican party.

America is the only country in the world that classifies as Negro any person who has one drop of African blood in his or her veins.

Election victories are a harvest. You plant the seed. For months or years, you water and tend them. In the election season, you reap the harvest.

I spent many years working for voting rights, but we still see sophisticated efforts, led by white officials, to disenfranchise black voters in local and national elections.

The member of Congress who forgets his constituents’ needs usually serves only one term.

Politics is not a tea party. When it is time to act, you have to move fast and decisively.

Once bitten, you seldom lose the political bug.

When people treat corruption as a routine part of the process, you have something far worse than wrongdoing or moral failing. You have a political cancer that breeds cynicism about democratic government and infects all of society.

Labels applied to people of any race are inherently offensive.