Justice [Sandra Day] O'Connor has been the critical decisive vote on many issues that go to the heart of who we are as a nation.

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.

Committing your goals to paper increases the likelihood of your achieving them by one thousand percent.

And kindness is a weakness. I can see that now. But it's a weakness I'm still not sure I'd want to give up entirely .

Stay open to opportunity -- you never know where your next important connection will be made.

To know true love, even though it was impossible to keep, had finally cracked her heart open enough to let someone else in.

People are so stupid. They think they've got the whole puzzle figured out, but they're really so far off.

It's not better to give than to receive. It's insane to try to give and not receive.

If your nature is infinite awareness trapped in a body, suddenly there's a lack of happiness, a lack of freedom. No matter what you get you'll never be happy, because these are all trinkets.

I look upon another's insistence on the merits of his or her life - duties, intellect, accomplishment - and see that most of it is nonsense.

All have not the same capacity. I would allow a man of intellect to earn more, I would not cramp his talent.

To have one's own story told by a third party who doesn't know that the character in question is himself the hero of the story being told, that's a technical refinement.