"I am a prizefight fan and one of my favorite fighters was Floyd Patterson. At one time Floyd Patterson fought Muhammad Ali and Muhammad Ali was just whooping him and whooping him and whooping him. And his trainers kept putting him back in the ring and Floyd kept going in there and trying to fight. But Floyd Patterson didn't belong in the ring with Muhammad Ali. He could beat a lot of fighters, but he couldn't beat Muhammad Ali. He was in the wrong fight at the wrong time and he just got beat and beat and beat. And what a good trainer would do is throw in the towel, and say, 'We quit. It's a technical knockout. We'll fight another day. We'll figure out a new way to fight Muhammad Ali maybe or maybe that's just somebody we can't fight. It just wasn't our fight.'"
–—Congressman Steve Cohen, a Tennessee Democrat, giving his opinion on the floor of the House of Representatives on Feb. 13 about the Iraq War resolution.
Source: The Library of Congress
This article appears in Feb 21-27, 2007.