In going too far, they [presidents] have taken away the individual rights of American citizens.

And the banks - hard to believe in a time when we're facing a banking crisis that many of the banks created - are still the most powerful lobby on Capitol Hill. And they frankly own the place.

It simply isn't fair for senators to cut to the front of the line when seniors around the country have been forced to wait for hours to get a flu shot.

Millions of Americans take vitamins safely every day, including me. Vitamins and mineral supplements taken in recommended doses are safe. It's the designer supplements that are worrisome.

We can't do much about ensuring that the homeland is safe if our local police and sheriffs' departments don't have the personnel they need to keep our streets and neighborhoods secure.

It is unacceptable that disabled veterans in Illinois rank at the bottom of the list when it comes to disability pay. We owe our disabled veterans more than speeches, parades and monuments.

We will have health care reform in America.

Our party is a diverse one, as is my home state of Illinois.

There is no room for legal hair-splitting when it comes to the humane treatment of detainees - not in a nation founded on the rule of law and respect for human rights.

We have 11 million people in this country that need a pathway to citizenship.

You know, the purpose of reconciliation is to avoid the filibuster. The filibuster is an effort to talk something to death.

I knew that suffering can purify, that it's a kind of fire that can be worth enduring, but there were degrees of it to which I chose not to subject myself.

One day you may just do that!

I don't want to jump off the roof or jump for joy depending on my movie reviews, or whether it makes money. I think the larger, more meaningful things are family and the people you love.

I believe that it is the responsibility of everyone in corporate life to help with the funding of non-profit organizations.

Emotions have no place in business, unless you do business with them.

All that is best in the great poets of all countries is not what is national in them, but what is universal.

When a man is pleased with the lot of others, he is dissatisfied with his own, as a matter of course.

I often thought my gravestone would say, 'Here lies Gandalf. He came out,'

Epithets are not arguments. Abuse does not persuade.

If a child goes the wrong way, it is not the child who is to be blamed; it is the parents who are responsible.