"Congress is so strange. A man gets up to speak and says nothing. Nobody listens--and then everybody disagrees."

      Boris Marshalov, Quoted in Alexander Wiley, LAUGHING
            WITH CONGRESS (1947).

"If you give Congress a chance to vote on both sides of an issue, it will always do it."

      Les Aspin, Interview, NEW YORK TIMES (1982).

"Now and then an innocent man is sent to the legislature."

      Frank McKinney Hubbard, ABE MARTIN'S BROADCAST (1930).

"No man will ever bring out of that office the reputation which carries him into it. The honeymoon would be as short in that case as in any other, and its moments of ecstacy would be ransomed by years of torment and hatred."

      Thomas Jefferson, Letter (1796).

"Great men are not chosen President, firstly, because great men are rare in politics; secondly, because the method of choice does not bring them to the top; thirdly, because they are not, in quiet times, absolutely needed."

      James Bryce, THE AMERICAN COMMONWEALTH (1888).

"All Presidents start out to run a crusade but after a couple of years they find they are running something less heroic and much more intractible: namely the presidency. The people are well cured by then of election fever, during which they they think they are chosing Moses. In the third year, they look on the man as a sinner and a bumbler and begin to poke around for rumors of another Messiah."

      Alistair Cooke, TALK ABOUT AMERICA (1968).