Everett Dirksen quotes:

A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you're talking about real money.

I am a man of fixed and unbending principles, the first of which is to be flexible at all times.

When all is said and done, the real citadel of strength of any community is in the hearts and minds and desires of those who dwell there.

We have been through this is biennial convulsion four or five different times over the past 10 or 12 years, and now it appears that we are going through this quiet agony all over again.

During a political campaign everyone is concerned with what a candidate will do on this or that question if he is elected except the candidate; he's too busy wondering what he'll do if he isn't elected.

But the basic difficulty still remains: It is the expansion of Federal power, about which I wish to express my alarm. How easily we embrace such business.

I have said, with respect to authorization bills, that I do not want the Congress or the country to commit fiscal suicide on the installment plan.

The U.S. Senate - an old scow which doesn't move very fast, but never sinks.

There is no force so powerful as an idea whose time has come.

Stronger than all the armies is an idea thats time has come. ... The time has come for equality of opportunity in sharing in government, in education, and in employment. It will not be stayed or denied. It is here!

Dirksen's Three Laws of Politics: 1. Get elected. 2. Get re-elected. 3. Don't get mad, get even.

When a member of the House moves over to the Senate, he raises the IQ of both bodies.

The oil can is mightier than the sword.

We are becoming so accustomed to millions and billions of dollars that 'thousands' has almost passed out of the dictionary."

The mind is no match with the heart in persuasion; constitutionality is no match with compassion.

Whatever the color of a man's skin, we are all mankind. So every denial of freedom, of equal opportunity for a livelihood, or for an education, diminishes me.

When I feel the heat, I see the light.

Life is not a static thing. The only people who do not change their minds are incompetents in asylums, and those in cemeteries.

I am a man of principle, and one of my basic principles is flexibility.

We are becoming so accustomed to millions and billions of dollars that 'thousands' has almost passed out of the dictionary.