Politics is a contest among people of diverse backgrounds and philosophies, advocating different solutions to common problems. The system only works when principled, energetic people participate.

We discussed politics, but we also talked about the importance of hard work, personal responsibility, living within your means, keeping your word. Those lessons stay with you throughout your life.

Some of the most important conversations I've ever had occurred at my family's dinner table.

I don't know what leadership is. You can't touch it. You can't feel it. It's not tangible. But I do know this: you recognize it when you see it.

It's appropriate to celebrate public service, and the thoughtful people who choose to serve. They symbolize what is good and decent about this historic citizen legislature, and we thank them.

Leadership is about doing what you know is right - even when a growing din of voices around you is trying to convince you to accept what you know to be wrong.

I support stem cell research, including embryonic stem cell research.

Serving in Congress has been the honor of a lifetime.

We have no more fundamental obligation in government than to ensure the safety of our citizens.

Thoughtful people of different political philosophies can disagree, but in a very agreeable manner.

I generally believe in polls. Scientific polls are accurate.

The thing they're trying to stop is 30-million people getting health insurance. That's the substance.

People perceive the divine according to their own biases. That doesn’t make the experience any less real.

The natural effect of sorrow over the dead is to refine and elevate the mind.

We all have within us a deep wisdom, but sometimes we don't know we have it.

[Cultural department] understand nothing but bureaucratic daily affairs. They don't care about culture.

She will never win him, whose words had shown she feared to lose.

By losing your goal, You have lost your way.

Reading enables us to see with the keenest eyes, to hear with the finest ears, and listen to the sweetest voices of all time.

It is a cardinal sin to bore the reader.

What really makes baseball so hard is it's retributive capacity for disaster if the smallest thing is done wrong, and the invisible presence of defeat that attends every game.