Jacob K. Javits Quote
Birth and death are the most singular events we experience - and the contemplation of death, as of birth, should be a thing of beauty, not ignobility.
Jacob K. Javits
Birth and death are the most singular events we experience - and the contemplation of death, as of birth, should be a thing of beauty, not ignobility.
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About Jacob K. Javits
Born to Jewish parents, Javits was raised in a tenement on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. He graduated from the New York University School of Law and established a law practice in New York City. During World War II, he served in the United States Army's Chemical Warfare Department. Outraged by the corruption of Tammany Hall, Javits joined the Republican Party and supported New York Mayor Fiorello H. La Guardia. He was elected to the House of Representatives in 1946 and served in that body until 1954. In the House, Javits supported President Harry S. Truman's Cold War foreign policy and voted to fund the Marshall Plan. He defeated Franklin Delano Roosevelt Jr. in the 1954 election for Attorney General of New York, and defeated Democrat Robert F. Wagner Jr. in the 1956 U.S. Senate election.
In the Senate, Javits supported much of President Lyndon B. Johnson's Great Society programs and civil rights legislation, including the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. He voted for the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution but came to question Johnson's handling of the War in Vietnam. To rein in presidential war powers, Javits sponsored the War Powers Resolution. Javits also sponsored the Employee Retirement Income Security Act, which regulated defined-benefit private pensions. In 1980, Javits lost the Republican Senate primary to Al D'Amato, who campaigned to Javits's right. Nonetheless, he ran in the general election as the Liberal Party nominee. He and Democratic nominee Elizabeth Holtzman were defeated by D'Amato. Javits died of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis in West Palm Beach, Florida in 1986.