“Aggressively fighting for the right is the noblest sport the world affords.” – Theodore Roosevelt

In the two days leading up to tonight’s historic health care reform vote in the House of Representatives, President Obama has relied on–and very effectively applied–quotations of past presidents to support his cause.

While speaking at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia on Friday, Obama referenced President Theodore Roosevelt, reminding those assembled that the fight for health care reform in the United States traces its roots back more than one hundred years:

So here’s my bottom line. I know this has been a difficult journey. I know this will be a tough vote. I know that everybody is counting votes right now in Washington. But I also remember a quote I saw on a plaque in the White House the other day. It’s hanging in the same room where I demanded answers from insurance executives and just received a bunch of excuses. And it was a quote from Teddy Roosevelt, the person who first called for health care reform — that Republican — all those years ago. And it said, “Aggressively fighting for the right is the noblest sport the world affords.”

In his address to the Democratic Caucus yesterday at the Capitol, Obama again mined the eloquent words of one of his predecessors to the presidency, Abraham Lincoln.  He spoke for over a half hour and began by saying:

I have the great pleasure of having a really nice library at the White House. And I was tooling through some of the writings of some previous Presidents and I came upon this quote by Abraham Lincoln: “I am not bound to win, but I’m bound to be true. I’m not bound to succeed, but I’m bound to live up to what light I have.”

Only time will determine whether this historic health care legislation will prove to be successful. But its passage ranks among the greatest examples of presidential leadership in the past forty years.

At each critical step of this process, Obama was greatly aided by words; his own as well as those of others that he used to make the complex clear and to connect the goals he shared with millions of Americans to our shared history. The words were used to teach, advocate, and catalyze. Without them, the health care legislation passed tonight in the House of Representatives would have failed.