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

— Everett Dirksen Attributed

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by John Kriegsman, confidant of Dirksen's and one-time Republican official in Illinois. Kriegsman reportedly heard this and similar statements as off-the-cuff remarks during campaigns and meetings in Illinois. Reported in Respectfully Quoted: A Dictionary of Quotations (1989) as not appearing in any formal address or in Dirksen's papers.

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More quotes by Everett Dirksen

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

We have been through this 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.

Stronger than all the armies is an idea that's 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!

There are gentle men in whom gentility finally destroys whatever of iron there was in their souls. There are iron men in whom the iron corroded whatever gentility they possessed. There are men—not many to be sure—in whom the gentility and the iron were preserved in proper balance, each of these attributes to be summoned up as the occasion requires. Such a man was Harry Byrd.

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Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Everett Dirksen (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.