For me, this is a person that encapsulates all that I admire in a public servant. I was fortunate enough to meet her because while my daughter was at the University of Chicago Law School both her and my daughter lived in the same building. I was in the elevator with her and then outside where we carried a very interesting and lively conversation. Once she found out I was Cuban and that my daughter lived there it was as if she wanted to pump information out of me…
She asked me what I thought would follow Fidel Castro’s death and I told her I thought of the Chinese model after Mao Tze Tung, it remained totalitarian and repressive but opened up to investments and the free enterprise system.
A bright and delightful person she was. Here are some of Carol Moseley Braun’s quotes:
“All I really want to be is boring. When people talk about me, I'd like them to say, Carol's basically a short Bill Bradley. Or, Carol's kind of like Al Gore in a skirt.”
“And frankly, being a woman I think gives me a slightly different take on a lot of the issues and on a lot of the solutions to the problems we face.”
“Bush is giving the rich a tax cut instead of putting that cut in the pockets of working people.”
“I believe that our message of rebuilding America is one that will resonate with the American people.”
“I really think that's the key, part of the spiritual renewal that America needs to have, the notion that we really can have confidence in a better tomorrow.”
“I think Americans want to believe in this country again.”
“I think if we are actually going to accept our generation's responsibility, that's going to mean that we give our children no less retirement security than we inherited from our parents.”
“I think it does suggest that the American people really do want to listen to somebody who actually has some solutions, some answers, and gives them some hope.”
“I think that we have a responsibility to make certain that we are fiscally responsible in order to assure, frankly, future generations don't have to pay our bills.”
“I think the legacy of the civil rights movement is that now whites are more open to being represented by people of color or people who are women or, again, non-traditional candidates.”
“I was the only person of color in the Senate, and my colleagues were Strom Thurmond, Jesse Helms and Trent Lott.”
“If we can rebuild Iraq, we can rebuild Illinois and Indiana and if we can do Baghdad, we can do Baltimore.”
“Magic lies in challenging what seems impossible.”
“New Zealand, by the way, where I was ambassador, has had two women prime ministers - one from either party.”
“So I think that if we want to have a Congress, if we want to have government that looks like America, if we want to have government that is truly a representative Democracy, then we need to clearly address how we get our campaign laws out of the way of Democracy.”
“The fact is that the diversity in this political class serves the same interest as diversity in any arena, which is it stirs the competitive pot.”
“The failure in Ohio to have adequate voting capacity for the people who were registered and eligible to vote was an absolute denial of their right to vote.”
“The really important victory of the civil rights movement was that it made racism unpopular, whereas a generation ago at the turn of the last century, you had to embrace racism to get elected to anything.”
“Well, if you pick a fight with somebody that's smaller than you and you beat them, where's the honor in that?”
SOURCE: http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/c/carol_moseley_braun_2.html
