“I’m not sure we will have every single Democrat, but we want a large number of Republicans to be able to vote for this bill because we think that will encourage the House not only to move forward but to pass a bill.”

I’m still basically an idealist, which translates into getting real things done to make people’s lives better.

Anyone who thinks they have a monopoly on truth, and there is only one way to see the world, always gets us into trouble.

When a nominee doesn’t get 60 votes, you shouldn’t change the rules, you should change the nominee.

The Democratic Party was always there on crime, but in the past we let the ideologues on the left dominate. The Republicans may still let the ideologues on the right dominate.

I went to the public schools myself. And they were great for me.

Candidates With Deeply Held Christian Beliefs Are Unfit and Disqualified From Serving As A Federal Judge.

People are angry and dispirited about government because of a failure to do something about crime.

Let me say this, to all of the chattering class that so much focuses on those little tiny, yes, porky amendments – the American people really don’t care.

I don’t think we should be putting first-time drug offenders in jail for five years. It’s a waste of resources.

But these days there are a lot of younger people who would like to go into teaching but don’t because the economic opportunities are sometimes elsewhere.

If we are going to stay a great power and I hope and pray we will we need the truth. We need to know what is going right and we need to know what is going wrong. There is no greater time than now.

This is government’s primary function – to keep us safe – and when large percentages in America don’t feel safe, they start asking: What am I paying my taxes for? What is government all about?

There are many reasons why Mitt Romney should not become president, but perhaps the most important of all is the narrowness of his experience, perspective and vision.

Crime can be a unifying argument – not an argument that people use as a code for us vs. them.

I’m strongly for a patient Bill of Rights. Decisions ought to be made by doctors, not accountants.

I think teaching should be an exalted profession, not a picked-on profession.

You want to spend your millions on a worthless cause? Try donating it to the Democrats.

The real democratic American idea is, not that every man shall be on a level with every other man, but that every man shall have liberty to be what God made him, without hindrance.

No country is free unless it is democratic.

The building of America has had its fair share of mistakes, but it’s a constitution that’s the jewel of democracy, the envy of many, and it’s the most generous nation in the world.

I hope the two wings of the Democratic Party may flap together.

The intolerant man will not rely on persuasion, or on the worth of the idea. He would deny to others the very freedom of opinion or of dissent which he so stridently demands for himself. He cannot trust democracy.

I took my grandmother to the emergency room. The doctor said that she was on an artificial life support system, and that although her brain was dead her heart was still beating. I though, “we’ve never had a democrat in the family before”.

The whole purpose of democracy is that we may hold counsel with one another, so as not to depend upon the understanding of one man.