Unfortunately the Republican tax cut will deny important revenues to many states facing their own deficits. This will create greater pressure for higher state and local taxes.

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.

Nothing was working, and my friend was dead, and I didn't want to look at that.

Murderers have usually killed the one person in the world that was bugging them and they're usually quite peaceful and agreeable.

If all the insects were to disappear from the earth, within 50 years all life on earth would end. If all human beings disappeared from the earth, within 50 years all forms of life would flourish.

The sand stretched out gray and ghostlike and illuminated, a column of light leading forward. It was like something a dead person would see, a tunnel leading toward heaven.

I do not allow myself vain regrets or foreboding.

God is more interested in declaring than explaining.

Stop shallow water from running, it will rage; tread on a worm and it will turn.

It would be nice if at least 1/3 of the people in Korea think that I'm modest.

Legends are often destroyed by those in need of its stuff.