“The U.S. affirms freedom of speech.[Vladimir] Putin is no friend of freedom of speech.”

We should vigorously debate policy differences. We have too much all-or-nothing in American politics.

We’re not at war with all Muslims, we’re at war with a subset of Islam that believes in killing in the name of religion, as jihadis do.

The vast majority of that is health entitlements – Medicare, Obamacare, Medicaid. There’s also Social Security, interest on the debt. But fundamentally, health entitlements are the thing that will bankrupt our kids. We need to fix that for the long-term.

[Vladimir] Putin is an enemy of political dissent. The U.S. celebrates political dissent and the right for people to argue free from violence about places where our ideas are in conflict.

What happens in Senate fight club stays in Senate fight club.

What’s more constructive for our kids is to go on a case-by-case basis, evaluating particular policies.

I think I’m one of five people in the Senate who’s never been a politician before. And now that I am a politician, what I find weird about it is that I respect myself less.

[Vladimir] Putin is an enemy of the free press. The U.S. celebrates free press.

So [Vladimir] Putin is a mess. He’s committed all sort of murderous thuggery, and I am opposed to the way Putin conducts himself in world affairs, and I hope that the president also wants to show moral leadership about this issue.

There is no equivalency between the United States of America, the greatest freedom loving nation in the history of the world, and the murderous thugs that are in [Vladimir] Putin’s defense of his cronyism. There’s no moral equivalency there.

I didn’t go to Harvard because I thought they had good academics. I went because they had crappy enough sports so they’d let me play.

People think if they voted for somebody, they should reflexively defend everything they do or say. And if you voted against somebody, you should just as reflexively oppose everything they do or say. It’s not very helpful.

Putin has as one of his core objectives fracturing NATO, which is one of the greatest military alliances in the history of the world.

he U.S. celebrates political dissent and the right for people to argue free from violence about places or ideas that are in conflict.

In the American constitutional system of three different branches, conflict – and I mean that peaceful, vigorous debate – it’s a feature of our system, not a bug. We need less all-or – winner-take-all politics.

I don’t understand what the president’s [Donald Trump] position is on Russia. But I can tell you what my position is on Russia: Russia is a great danger to a lot of its neighbors, and [Vladimir]

My purpose here is to affirm that the unitive state is a hidden path in itself, a movement in its own right that ultimately leads to no-self (no true-self and no-union). In short, the unitive state is the hidden path to no-self.

Love without truth is sentimentality; it supports and affirms us but keeps us in denial about our flaws. Truth without love is harshness; it gives us information but in such a way that we cannot really hear it.

I love black because it affirms, designs and styles. A woman in a black dress is a pencil stroke.

It is saying less than the truth to affirm that an excellent book (and the remark holds almost equally good of a Raphael as of a Milton) is like a well-chosen and well-tended fruit tree. Its fruits are not of one season only. With the due and natural intervals.

We affirm that the true story of capitalism is now beginning, because capitalism is not a system of oppression only, but is also a selection of values, a coordination of hierarchies, a more amply developed sense of individual responsibility.

Christianity affirms the value of each individual soul. Nazism denies it.

But what then am I? A thing that thinks. What is that? A thing that doubts, understand, affirms, denies, wills, refuses, and that also imagines and senses.

Rarely affirm, seldom deny, always distinguish.