“Let’s be clear: Has the U.S. ever made any mistakes? Of course.Is the U.S. at all like [Vladimir] Putin’s regime? Not at all.”

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

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.

So many of today’s programs are about trophies and jackets, and we think that’s a big mistake.

The greatest mistake is to continue to practice a mistake.

Making mistakes is a lot better than not doing anything.

We’re only human, we’re supposed to make mistakes.

Journalists who make mistakes get sued for libel; historians who make mistakes get to publish a revised edition.

You can walk away from your mistakes You can turn your back on what you do Just a little smile is all it takes And you can have your cake and eat it too.

Why is marijuana against the law? It grows naturally on our planet, serves a thousand different functions, all of them positive. To make marijuana against the law is like saying that God made a mistake.

I think it’s really important to be able to be honest with yourself and to know philosophically speaking what you’ve done wrong and when you’ve made a mistake, and acknowledge that, because you only learn from it.