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Henry Fountain Ashurst Quotes

Henry Fountain Ashurst was an American Democratic politician and one of the first two Senators from Arizona. Largely self-educated, he served as a district attorney and member of the Arizona Territorial legislature before fulfilling his childhood ambition of joining the United States Senate. During his time in the Senate, Ashurst was chairman of the Committee on Indian Affairs and the Judiciary Committee.

Called "the longest U.S. theatrical engagement on record" by Time,

Ashurst's political career was noted for a self-contradictory voting record, the use of a sesquipedalian vocabulary, and for a love of public speaking that earned him a reputation as one of the Senate's greatest orators. Among the sobriquets assigned to him were "the Dean of Inconsistency", "Five-Syllable Henry", and the "Silver-Tongued Sunbeam of the Painted Desert". Wikipedia  

✵ 13. September 1874 – 31. May 1962
Henry Fountain Ashurst photo
Henry Fountain Ashurst: 10 quotes0 likes

Famous Henry Fountain Ashurst Quotes

“… I shall not waste any time on such miserable twaddle as to say that I ought to have been elected. … It is the undoubted right of the people to change their servants, and to remove one and displace him with another at any time they choose, for a good reason, for a bad reason, or for no reason at all. If we are to remain a free people, it is the duty of public servants not grumpily and sourly to accept the verdict of the majority, but joyously to accept that verdict....”

Henry Fountain Ashurst

"Ashurst Out" http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,801964-2,00.html. Time (September 23, 1940)

“No man is fit to be a Senator… unless he is willing to surrender his political life for great principle.”

Henry Fountain Ashurst

"Ashurst, Defeated, Reviews Service". New York Times (September 12, 1940), p. 18.

“Whoever in his public services is handcuffed and shackled by the vice of consistency will be a man not free to act as various questions come before him from time to time; he will be a statesman locked in a prison house, keys to which are in the keeping of days and events that are dead. Let me quote Emerson: 'A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen.”

Henry Fountain Ashurst

Johnson, James W. (2002). Arizona Politicians: The Noble and the Notorious, illustrations by David `Fitz' Fitzsimmons, University of Arizona Press. p 112.

“It is still an open question as to whether mankind or insects shall ultimately inherit the earth. It is my opinion that mankind … has about a 50-50 chance….”

Henry Fountain Ashurst

"The Silver-Tongued Sunbeam" http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,848048,00.html. Time (August 7, 1939)

“Poker teaches self-reliance, self-control, self-respect, self-denial, and independence. But when cards are wild or are given fictitious authority, the noble game is robbed of its romance, grace and stimulation and degenerates into a gambling scheme.”

Henry Fountain Ashurst

Johnson, James W. (2002). Arizona Politicians: The Noble and the Notorious, illustrations by David `Fitz' Fitzsimmons, University of Arizona Press. p 118.

“I could throw 56-pound words clear across the Grand Canyon. As a matter of course, I went into politics.”

Henry Fountain Ashurst

"The Silver-Tongued Sunbeam" http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,896290-1,00.html. Time (June 8, 1962)

Henry Fountain Ashurst Quotes

“There has never been superadded to these vices of mine the withering, embalming vice of consistency.”

Henry Fountain Ashurst

"Arizona's Pioneer Senator". New York Times (June 1, 1962)

“A speech is entertaining only when serenely detached from all information.”

Henry Fountain Ashurst

"The Silver-Tongued Sunbeam" http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,848048,00.html. Time (August 7, 1939)

“I suffer from cacoethes loquendi, a mania or itch for talking, and from vanity... and morbidity, and, as is obvious to everyone who knows me, an inborn, an inveterate flair for histrionics. … I am pachydermatous. … I am a veritable peripatetic bifurcated volcano on behalf of Democratic principles.”

Henry Fountain Ashurst

"The Silver-Tongued Sunbeam" http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,848048,00.html. Time (August 7, 1939)

“You send me to Washington to represent you in the senate. But you do not send me there because you are interested in grave questions of national or international policy. When I come back to Arizona, you never ask me any questions about such policies; instead you ask me: “What about my pension?” or “What about that job for my son?” I am not in Washington as a statesman. I am there as a very well paid messenger boy doing your errands. My chief occupation is going around with a forked stick picking up little fragments of patronage for my constituents.”

Henry Fountain Ashurst

Reported in Thomas C. Donnelly, Rocky Mountain Politics (1940), p. 283; reported as unverified in Respectfully Quoted: A Dictionary of Quotations (1989).
Attributed

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