“They have to convert our agenda into something aggressive. Two guys wanting to be happy together are invading their marriages. Helping a kid who’s getting beaten up in school is promoting homosexuality. If you gave me a million dollars, I wouldn’t know how to promote homosexuality.”

And unless you think there is a serious chance you’re going to jail, don’t listen to your lawyer.

When I was here there was still a requirement that students had to swim 50 yards to graduate…because Harry Elkins Widener had drowned with the sinking of the Titanic. And it made me very grateful at the time that he had not gone down in a plane crash.

Martin Luther King said, and it is sadly still true, that one of the most segregated times in America is the hour of worship.

Ronald Reagan believes in the free market like some people believe in unicorns.

For many of those who had historically supported welfare programs in the broadest sense, it was perfectly reasonable to enact legislation in which poor people were the objects of efforts to assist them.

It is, of course, further indication that a fundamentalist right has really taken over much of the Republican Party, People might cite George Bush as proof that you can be totally impervious to the effects of Harvard and Yale education.

Excessive partisanship is the problem. There has never been a democracy in the history of the world in a polity of any size where you didn’t have political parties. Even sometimes over the objections of the people who started it.

I will tell you, I’m a lousy cook, but I think I’m a pretty good judge of a good meal.

Moderate Republicans are reverse Houdinis. They tie themselves up in knots and then tell you they can’t do anything because they’re tied up in knots.

Disruption never helps your cause. … It just looks like you’re afraid to have rational discussion.

The fact that theyre a congressionally chartered group should no more incline people to give to that group than the fact that its National Pickle Month should make them eat more pickles.

I should have voted for the first Iraq war. George Bush did that one very well. I had been skeptical. I was afraid that George Bush was going to treat the first Iraq war the way his son treated the second.

Lawyers are very, very good at keeping you out of prison, but they will sacrifice your reputation and credibility to do so.

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.

Mister, I don’t want no trouble. I just came downtown here to get some hard rock candy for my kids, some gingham for my wife. I don’t even know what gingham is, but she goes through about ten rolls a week of that stuff. I ain’t looking for no trouble, Mister.

My parents put me in the water very early, and also had me skiing at a very early age. They put me on skis when I was one and a half.

I wasn’t terribly aware of Catwoman. She was a DC comics character and as a kid, I wasn’t terribly fond of the DC comics characters. I was a Marvel boy.

Every child needs a safe place to fall – a place where he or she can explore things without worrying about failure and judgment.

I do know the older I get, the more I’m referencing music I heard as a kid.

I train my kids to dream really big and impossible dreams and to pursue them doggedly.

I was the kid that wanted to be anonymous in that I’d put a football helmet on and be a member of a team and go out there and maim people. It was a very hard process. It truly was.

We want to give kids something to hope for. If one kid says, “Your cd helped get me through this year,” that’s all it takes.