The Best of Notable Quotables; December 24, 1990

Media Hero Award/At Home

"The problem for Florio is that, as history has shown, when you step up and are a leader, people often don’t like you. And it can take a long time, even centuries, for history to look back and say that was a good guy....I think that Florio will go down as the first, I hope not the last, brave man of the ‘80s and ‘90s."

-- Washington Post "Outlook" editor Jodie Allen on N.J. Governor who raised income taxes, July 29 Money Politics.

Runners-Up:

"Let Ronald Reagan ride off into the sunset untroubled by fleeting memories of astrologers, smoke-and-mirrors budget arithmetic, and arms-for-hostages swaps. Dwell instead on those political tall timbers still standing, the heirs of Jefferson, Madison, and Lincoln....Only Jesse Jackson, still an acquired taste for most white Americans, can strike the kind of inspirational pose that one could imagine being immortalized in granite."

-- Time Senior Writer Walter Shapiro in the September GQ.

"[Justice William Brennan] loved the flag clearly, and the Constitution, too...Maybe the way to remember Brennan’s years on the Court is with some words he spoke to another Georgetown University event back in 1979. ‘The quest for freedom, dignity, and the rights of man will never end,’ he said. The quest, though always old, is never old, like the poor old woman in Yeats’ play. ‘Did you see an old woman going down the path?’ asked Bridget. ‘I did not,’ replied Patrick, who had come into the house just after the old woman had left it. ‘But I saw a young girl and she had the walk of a queen.’ William Brennan loved and served two young girls who walked like queens -- his country, and its highest court."

-- Conclusion to story by reporter Bruce Morton on the July 21 CBS Evening News.

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