Ted Kennedy Quotes

I enjoyed working with Ted Kennedy.

There is nobody that's ever going to fill Ted Kennedy's shoes, and that's a tall order for somebody in the family to try to live up to.

In those days, the late 1970s, one of the leading politicians was a soon-to-be uncle by marriage of Arnold Schwarzenegger, named Ted Kennedy.

In what might be a motto of those who sought the presidency and lost, Ted Kennedy once said, "Frankly, I don't mind not being President. I just mind that someone else is."

Ted Kennedy's achievements as a senator have towered over his time, changing the lives of far more Americans than remember the name Mary Jo Kopechne.

...one is reminded that [John Kerry, D-MA] really just a better-looking Ted Kennedy, a richer Michael Dukakis.

I don't think it was progressive to vote to give gun makers and sellers immunity. I don't think it was progressive to vote against Ted Kennedy's immigration reform.

Why do we start immigration in 1965? Guess whose idea it was? Ted Kennedy. Ted Kennedy, 1965, we needed to reinstitute the immigration laws. It wasn't based in humanity, although that's the way it was sold. It was rooted in registering voters.

There were a lot of Romneys. There's the Romney who was going to be better on gay rights than Ted Kennedy; now there's a Romney who checks with Rick Santorum on that issue.

I guess my claim to fame is I've now gaveled Ted Kennedy to order twice.

No Child Left Behind ... is a giraffe with an elephant's body. ... You can't take the vision of Ted Kennedy and merge it to the public policy of George Bush and come out with anything that works.

The fact is that we would have had comprehensive health care now had it not been for Ted Kennedy's deliberately blocking the legislation that I proposed in 1978 or '79.

Declassified papers report that John Kennedy was taking eight different medications a day. He was so wasted, his Secret Service code name was Ted Kennedy.

When I came back to Washington to be The Times' chief congressional correspondent in 1991, I was looking for a book subject, and Ted Kennedy stood out for two reasons.

I'm very disturbed at the picture that was painted by Senator Ted Kennedy that Samuel Alito is not a man of his word, that he is dishonest. The implication that he is not reliable I don't think is a fair characterization of what I've read.

The difference between Carter and [Ted] Kennedy: Carter has this vague religion which he believes in strongly, while Kennedy has this strong religion which he believes in vaguely.

The last time I saw Ted Kennedy was a generation after my first meeting, at the Senate subway below the Capitol on Obama's Inauguration Day. He was his usual gregarious and gracious self - with beaming smile and booming voice wishing my husband and me good luck with our pregnancy and expressing his excitement about the new president.

I used to think Cape Wind was a great idea. That was when Ted Kennedy was alive and railing about how he might spill his Chivas if he had to keep maneuvering the Mya around all those noisy seagull-murdering wind turbines. Anything Ted Kennedy was against, I was for.

In the end, Ted Kennedy was a politician, plain and simple. Yet he embodied how politics and public service can be successfully intertwined. You cant be a good public servant without being a good politician. Kennedy was both.

As a result of our [my campaign's] discussions and other interactions with gay and lesbian voters across the state, I am more convinced than ever that as we seek to establish full equality for America's gay and lesbian citizens, I will provide more effective leadership than my opponent [Ted Kennedy].

Scott Brown may be the last Republican to win a statewide fight in Massachusetts for a very long time. He caught the machine flat-footed in January 2010 when he out-hustled Martha Coakley and stole the Senate seat Ted Kennedy held all those years. And since then, the Democrats haven't lost a single statewide fight.

Scott Brown's victory in Massachusetts has got to have Ted Kennedy rolling over in his grave, spilling his drink.

[Senators John Kerry & John Edwards] have risen high in Democratic polls with a brand of class resentment and soak-the-rich rhetoric rooted in the old-fashioned liberalism of Ted Kennedy.

Ted Kennedy is endorsing John Kerry and I'm wondering, do you really want the endorsement of a guy with a Bloody Mary mustache?

The way you have bipartisan negotiations, you sit down across the table, as we did with Ted Kennedy, as I've done with many other members, and you say, 'OK, here's what I want, here's what you want. We'll adhere to your principles, but we'll make concessions.'

John Kerry was the big winner in Iowa. Ted Kennedy introduced Kerry as the 'comeback kid.' That used to be Bill Clinton's name - because every time he would come back to a city, he would find out if he had a kid or not.

There was a whole group that really welcomed me: George Mitchell was one, Ted Kennedy, Chris Dodd, the reformers were really delighted to see me. So if you were one of those squeaky clean, shiny bright, let's reform the world, you were very glad to see Barb Mikulski, and George Mitchell was in that category.

In my very first term there was an issue that brought us [George Mitchell, Ted Kennedy, Chris Dodd] together in a very deep, emotional, and personal level.It was called 'spousal impoverishment' and it meant that for one person [to go into] a nursing home, the family [ ], could go near bankruptcy, and then they'd end up with a lien on the family farm or the home. And so I wanted to change that.

Our liberal, New York/Washington-based media would never in a million years put Liberal Godfather Ted Kennedy on the spot about his clan's bad behavior, to whose lurid history he himself has contributed so much.

We went 60 years or more with no immigration, folks. It can be done. The only reason that it started up again, Ted Kennedy started bellyaching about it in the mid-sixties, and then that led to Simpson-Mazzoli 20 years later, 1986, amnesty for about 3.9 million, and we were told that would be it, never again, and of course now we're where we are.

A Ted Kennedy, John Kerry, John Edwards, Howard Dean, George Soros, or Al Gore looks - no, acts - like he either came out of a hairstylist's salon or got off a Gulfstream.

You want to trace California's move to the far left, you go back to the 1986 Simpson-Mazzoli bill. Simpson-Mazzoli was where we granted amnesty to, at the time, what was three and a half million illegal aliens. And that's it. We were told that would be it. We would start being strict about guarding the borders and making sure that there wasn't any more illegal immigration, but that didn't happen. That was the design. Ted Kennedy, Simpson-Mazzoli, it was their idea here and it's worked out magnificently for them to this extent.

Ted Kennedy says that our policy in Iraq is adrift. Hmmm. Maybe like a car adrift in the water after its has gone over a bridge?

[Sen. John] Kerry is also a man who opposes the death penalty, wants to restrict access to guns and voted against the resolution approving the start of ground operations against Saddam Hussein in 1991 - just what you would expect from Ted Kennedy's partner and Michael Dukakis's running mate.