“Serving in Congress is like having a second shot at high school.”

I am very proud of the role I played in getting legal equality for people who are lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender, and in helping get rid of the prejudice by being visible about it, helping to block the conviction of Bill Clinton of impeachment.

The rights of the people who have done terrible things are hard to defend. You have to keep pointing out, the question is the process to determine whether they’ve done the terrible things.

[Democrats] are trying on every front to increase the role of government.

There is a correlation between people who attack same-sex marriage and have difficulty maintaining their own.

What’s troubling is that the Republicans to defend Mr. DeLay are weakening the ethics process.

The issue is not that morals be applied to public policy, it’s that conservatives bring public policy to spheres of our lives where it should not enter.

We don’t get ourselves dry cleaned.

I have been mislabeled as a big advocate of low-income home ownership over rental.

If Bob Barr (conservative republican congressman from Georgia) caught on fire and I was holding a bucket of water, it would be great act of discipline to pour it on him. I would do it, but I’d hate myself in the morning.

Regarding homophobia in general, the good news is that there is a lot less of it than there used to be. The bad news is that it ever existed in the first place, and the worse news is that it remains far stronger than is healthy for a society dedicated in theory to equality under the law.

Conservatives believe that from the standpoint of the federal government, life begins at conception and ends at birth.

I had always been interested in politics. I had assumed – for two reasons, being Jewish and being gay back in the late ’50s, early ’60s – that I would never be elected or anything, but I would participate as an activist.

Donald Trump has done more for getting people to understand the importance of public policy that respond to public needs in an affirmative way than anything we could have done on our own.

It seems to me that politicians ought to use the same words as other people.

But here too it should be noted that the President’s approach was to first ask the repressive and brutal Taliban to surrender Osama bin Laden to us, and only after that government refused to do that did we invade.

The left and the right live in parallel universes. The right listens to talk radio, the left’s on the Internet and they just reinforce one another. They have no sense of reality. I have now one ambition: to retire before it becomes essential to tweet.

Said the airwaves belong to the people, which means, in essence, that it belongs to Congress.

If they exist, Congress needs to get them. If they’re not provided willingly, Congress should subpoena them.

We need Democrats and Republicans in Congress to work together to fashion a very comprehensive pushback to Russia, not just the cyber-hacking, but their bribery of officials in Europe, their social media campaign, their overt media campaign.

No other nation can do that the way we can, and it’s going to be very hard for Congress to do it over his opposition.

I meet with ambassadors from all countries in my role as a member of Congress, and you always have better relationships with those you actually personally get along with. That matters.

While General Howe with a Large Armament is advancing towards New York, our Congress resolved to Declare the United Colonies free and Independent States.

A Declaration for this Purpose, I expect, will this day pass Congress…It is gone so far that we must now be a free independent State, or a Conquered Country.

Perhaps our Congress will be Exalted on a high Gallows.