“America is a place where we all come together. It is a place of consensus.”

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.

Inaction is perhaps the greatest mistake of all.

The public knows how many good things there are as part of the Affordable Care Act. The Republicans say they’re going to repeal. They don’t know what to replace it with.

I support the death penalty for the kingpin, the guy at the top, but I don’t think you should throw a drug offender in jail for five years, and let a mugger out after a year.

Giving up even an ounce of precious freedom is a very serious thing to do.

You do have to change things as warfare changes.

Certainly any president – Democrat, Republican, liberal, conservative – should keep an open mind until they get the briefing.

We need to make sure middle-class people are able to pay the bills. We need to make sure that poor people don’t starve. Those are values, too.

Democrats don’t relate to middle-class people.

As long as the Palestinians send terrorists onto school buses and to nightclubs to blow up people, Israel has no choice but to build the fence.

We tend to talk, Democrats, as a party, in legislative terms.

I’d like to see the health care professionals making decisions, not some bureaucrat in Indianapolis working for an insurance company.

The whole idea of compassion is based on a keen awareness of the interdependence of all these living beings, which are all part of one another, and all involved in one another.

When attention is given to the spiritual aspect of one’s life, it brings a sense of belongingness, and responsibility, compassion and caring for the whole of humanity.

Even while living in the world, the heart of Mary was so filled with motherly tenderness and compassion for men that no-one ever suffered so much for their own pains, as Mary suffered for the pains of her children.

Compassion is the keen awareness of the interdependence of all things.

Please forgive them, even if they ask for forgiveness or not, it is humanity.

A teardrop on earth summons the King of heaven.

Let`s choose each day and every day to keep an attitude of faith and joy and belief and compassion.

Help other people get what they want – and you’ll get what you want.