In elective politics, it's up or out. You go up the ladder, or you get out of the game.

My parents taught me that racial prejudice is a sin, one that robs the world of great minds and talents.

My entire life has been devoted to breaking down barriers, to finding common ground.

Labels applied to people of any race are inherently offensive.

I spent many years working for voting rights, but we still see sophisticated efforts, led by white officials, to disenfranchise black voters in local and national elections.

Election victories are a harvest. You plant the seed. For months or years, you water and tend them. In the election season, you reap the harvest.

Politics is not a tea party. When it is time to act, you have to move fast and decisively.

You can't say the negro left the Republican party; the negro feels he was evicted from the Republican party.

To stand still is to regress.

Historically we have rejected extremism on the left and the right. Centrism is the right course for America.

The member of Congress who forgets his constituents' needs usually serves only one term.

Does it help?” he asks. “The e-mailing.”She nods. “A tiny bit. It’s strange. You’re writing a letter to someone who’s never going to read it, so it kind of frees you up a bit.

...killing rats wasn’t in my job description.

It seems that so much writing is being done in the nineteenth-century model, where every connection has to be thoroughly explained.

No one would ever say that someone with a broken arm or a broken leg is less than a whole person, but people say that or imply that all the time about people with mental illness

I had a similar year back in 1984 when I felt like I couldn't lose.

Freedom requires religion just as religion requires freedom.

And in the fountain squatted a giant crab. I’m not talking ‘giant’ like $7.99 all-you-can-eat Alaskan king crab. I’m talking ‘giant’ like bigger than the fountain.

Medicare is immune from the competitive pressures that force private insurers to pay attention to what patients and doctors want.

Most important, Christmas should be a spiritual experience....Christmas is not just an event in time; it is a spiritual experience available to every person who hears the Gospel.

As night-fall does not come at once, neither does oppression...It is in such twilight that we all must be aware of change in the air - however slight - lest we become victims of the darkness.