We don't need flowery words about inequality to tell us that, and we don't need a party that has led while poverty and hunger rose to record levels to give us lectures about suffering.

Wearing a Democratic label no longer matches what I know about my country and its possibilities.

This time, instead of moving oceans and healing planets, let's get our bills in order and pay down the debt so we control our own future.

You talk about the values that you have whether they're in favor or not in favor. That's how you lead. The reality is, we're losing more and more elections.

I think the most overused words in our vocabulary in the South are black and white.

Sometimes running for Congress is a four-year strategy in terms of getting out there and building a network.

The repeal of racist language in the Constitution of Alabama was and still is a necessary step in the state's ability to progress.

John F. Kennedy asked us what we could do for America. This Democratic Party asks what can government give you. Don't worry about paying the bill, it's on your kids and grandkids.

Ask yourself if these Democrats still speak for you. When they say we have a duty to grow government even when we can't afford it, does it sound like compassion to you - or recklessness?

I know 100 percent what it's like to have people tell you that you can't hold an office because of your color, and to have people vote based on that belief.

Now, America is a land of second chances, and I gather you have room for the estimated 6 million of us who know we got it wrong in 2008 and who want to fix it.

Freedom is not a gift bestowed upon us by other men, but a right that belongs to us by the laws of God and nature.

Writing a story about a place calls that world into existence. Sometimes, as the author, you accompany it for a while. But even as you write, the characters have minds of their own.

Teach me, O Lord, to glory in my cross. Teach me the value of my thorns. Show me how I have climbed to You through my path of pain. Show me that it is through my tears that I have seen rainbows.

As things get worse, poetry gets better because it becomes more necessary.

When we commune with the spirit within and ask for new ideas, they are always forthcoming.

Rich people (in Australia) have swimming pools in their gardens but, at least, they do swim in them.

I'm for truth, no matter who tells it.

When someone covets something they desire and lust over it.Usually it's something they can't have. You've always had that problem.

Grace fills empty spaces, but it can only enter where there is a void to receive it, and it is grace itself which makes this void.

... A rule of thinking which would absolutely prevent me from acknowledging certain kinds of truth if those ... truths were really there, would be an irrational rule.