Unfortunately, with the recent defeat of Kamala Harris, we will have fewer opportunities in the future to hear her speak, to illuminate, to orate, to elevate.

As partial recompense, I hereby offer some of her wisest and wittiest utterances … juxtaposed with quotes from prior presidents, to place her amongst her intellectual and moral peers:

Kamala Harris: “I can imagine what can be, and be unburdened by what has been.”

George Washington: “Government is not reason; it is not eloquent; it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master.”

Kamala Harris: “I love Venn diagrams. I really do, I love Venn diagrams. It’s just something about those three circles and the analysis about where there is the intersection, right?”

John Adams: “A Constitution of Government once changed from Freedom, can never be restored. Liberty, once lost, is lost forever.”

Kamala Harris: “Everything is in context—my mother used to, she would give us a hard time sometimes and she would say to us, ‘I don’t know what’s wrong with you young people, you think you just fell out of a coconut tree. You exist in the context of all in which you live and what came before you.’”

Thomas Jefferson: ”We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

Kamala Harris: “You guys are gonna see—you’re gonna literally see the craters on the moon with your own eyes…with your own eyes, I’m telling you!”

James Madison: “If our nation is ever taken over, it will be taken over from within.”

Kamala Harris: “Who doesn’t love a yellow school bus, right? Can you raise your hand if you love a yellow school bus? Many of us went to school on the yellow school bus, right?”

Abraham Lincoln: “A house divided against itself cannot stand.”

Kamala Harris: “Culture is — it is a reflection of our moment in our time, right? And in present culture is the way we express how we’re feeling about the moment.”

FDR: “We have nothing to fear but fear itself.”

Kamala Harris: “So, I think it’s very important, as you have heard from so many incredible leaders, for us at every moment in time — and certainly this one — to see the moment in time in which we exist and are present, and to be able to contextualize it, to understand where we exist in the history and in the moment as it relates not only to the past but the future.”

Ronald Reagan: “Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it on to our children in the bloodstream. The only way they can inherit the freedom we have known is if we fight for it, protect it, defend it, and then hand it to them with the well-fought lessons of how they in their lifetime must do the same. And if you and I don’t do this, then you and I may well spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it once was like in America when men were free.”

Kamala Harris: “The wheels on the bus go round and round.”

You’re welcome.
 

Image: Screen shot from Sky News Australia video, via YouTube