Quoting from Neil Kinnock, running against Thatcher in 1987:Why am I the first Kinnock in a thousand generations to be able to get to university? Why is Glenys the first woman in her family in a thousand generations to be able to get to university? Is it because all our predecessors were thick? Did they lack talent? Those people who could sing, and play, and recite, and write poetry, those people who could make wonderful things with their hands? Those people who could dream dreams, see visions? Why didn't they get it? Was it because they were weak? Those people who could work eight hours underground and then come up and play football? Weak? Those women who could survive eleven childbearings? Were they weak? Anybody really think that they didn't get what we have because they didn't have the talent, or the strength, or the endurance, or the commitment? Of course not. It was because there was no platform on which they could stand. Joe Biden
About This Quote

It is because of the absence of leadership that we are unable to achieve anything, or anything worthwhile at any rate. Leadership is what makes it possible.

Source: Promises To Keep: On Life And Politics

Some Similar Quotes
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  2. Politics determines who has the power, not who has the truth. - Paul Krugman

  3. Immer wieder behauptete Unwahrheiten werden nicht zu Wahrheiten, sondern, was schlimmer ist, zu Gewohnheiten. - Oliver Hassencamp

  4. What people want, mainly, is to be told by some plausible authority that what they are already doing is right. I don't know know of a quicker way to become unpopular than to disagree. - John Brunner

  5. A people religiously right, will not long remain politically wrong. - William Arnot

More Quotes By Joe Biden
  1. I believe all Americans are born with certain inalienable rights. As a child of God, I believe my rights are not derived from the constitution. My rights are not derived from any government. My rights are not denied by any majority. My rights are because...

  2. The senate is a place filled with goodwill and good intentions, and if the road to hell is paved with them, then it's a pretty good detour. Hubert Humphrey, as quoted by Biden, p. 134

  3. But all our differences hardly measure up to the values we all hold in common...

  4. My own father had always said the measure of a man wasn't how many times or how hard he got knocked down, but how fast he got back up. I made a pledge to myself that I would get up and emerge from this debacle...

  5. If you do politics the right way, I believe, you can actually make people's lives better. And integrity is the minimum ante to get into the game.

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