Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I've resisted pronouncing a sentence before guilt is found. I will have this old-fashioned notion that even with people like Osama, who is very likely to be found guilty, we should do our best not to, in positions of executive power, not to prejudge jury trials.
Our right to disagree is precious but fragile. The best way to protect and preserve it is to let the other side speak without demonizing them or destroying their right to be heard. Such civil exchanges are the heart beat of democracy - essential to keeping it alive.
Most female CEOs have been more understanding than their male counterparts, of the stress that new mothers experience to 'do it all,' which often means, 'all by themselves.' Why? They've been there. They understand the policies needed to keep women in the workforce.
This guy is totally unorthodox. Maybe he`s flipping coins or playing three-card Monty to see who he wants to pick. Donald Trump is so unorthodox that I think it`s almost impossible to have any reasonable prediction about who he`s going to pick for the Vice-President.
You think people can work all day and then pick up their kids at child care or wherever, and get home, and then still manage to sandwich in an eight-hour vote? Well, Republicans, I guess, can do that, because a lot of them have never made an honest living in their lives.
Women need to see ourselves as individuals capable of creating change. That is what political and economic power is all about: having a voice, being able to shape the future. Women's absence from decision-making positions has deprived the country of a necessary perspective.
Every time a woman leaves the workforce because she can't find or afford childcare, or she can't work out a flexible arrangement with her boss, or she has no paid maternity leave, her family's income falls down a notch. Simultaneously, national productivity numbers decline.
So the - the part of the problem is not just the rhetoric. It's the fact that we - we're so polarized in what we've done to each other as parties over the last thirty years in redistricting that it's very, very hard to overcome your own constituencies and move to the middle.
As governor, I came to believe that the death penalty would be a just punishment for certain, especially heinous crimes, such as the murder of a child or the murder of a police officer. The events of September 11 convinced me that terrorists also deserve the ultimate punishment.
Most Christmas carols have no obvious religious content, or at least that's noticeable to most people. I mean, it is almost by definition, a cultural phenomenon, all these songs, even though they point to this very religious holiday. They're not religious songs in effect anymore.
I wish that there was a unified Democratic position on the war in Iraq. I was that there was a unified American position and everybody agreed with me that we ought to be out of there yesterday. But they don't, and that's the fact. I mean, he's stating a fact about what's going on.
To be political means to speak out, to risk being called 'catty', or worse. I don't hear men worrying about whether they may be right or not. They enjoy the fight, whether it is with words or fists. Women still tend to shy away from controversy, to be uncomfortable with competition.
Tom DeLay himself has never been the issue. DeLay is a symptom of a larger disease?a sick Republican culture of corruption that touches everyone who took his dirty money, voted for his corrupt leadership, or sat silently while their party has sold our government to the highest bidder.
You know, to listen to Senator Lieberman, Senator Kerry, Representative Gephardt, I'm anti-Israel, I'm anti-trade, I'm anti-Medicare and I'm anti-Social Security. I wonder how I ended up in the Democratic Party. I'm not a new entrant to the Democratic Party. I've been here a long time.
We're going to use Terri Schiavo later on. This is going to be an issue in 2006 and it's going to be an issue in 2008, because we're going to have an ad with a picture of Tom DeLay saying, "Do you want this guy to decide whether you die or not, or is that going to be up to your loved ones?
Is this so-called [Republican Party] hate wing that is so angry at all the things that have - all the changes that have happened in America, this is what they respond to.And I think it`s dangerous for the country, I also think it`s going to be incredibly unsuccessful in the general election.
One reason the United States is one of three countries in the world that do not have any form of paid maternity leave is that many American business leaders, like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, oppose any family-friendly policies. They scare people into thinking maternity leave will be a job killer.
Legislative proposals that would enable an employer to determine whether or not a woman's insurance would cover the cost of birth control strikes women as particularly bizarre. Is the boss going to take care of the children that are conceived accidentally? Stop treating us like children. Women are grown ups.
It's time for male leaders to not only ask for binders of qualified women, but to re-write the definition of 'qualified.' The best man for the job, may in fact, be a woman, whose biography is not traditional, but is rich with experiences and skills that are not necessarily learned either in school or on the job.
I'm interested in getting John Kerry elected President. And then I'm interested in doing whatever I can to see that Democrats retain Democratic values. And the thing I'm most interested in is health insurance for everybody. We're the only country in the industrialized world that doesn't have that, and we need that.
Prison is an important part of life. We can't have violent people running around in the streets. (3 out of 4 federal prisoners are serving time for non-violent crimes.) Most competent and qualified kindergarden teachers can tell you who the 5 kids are in his or her class likely to wind up in prison 15 - 20 years from now.
When all the world appears to be in a tumult, and nature itself is feeling the assault of climate change, the seasons retain their essential rhythm. Yes, fall gives us a premonition of winter, but then, winter, will be forced to relent, once again, to the new beginnings of soft greens, longer light, and the sweet air of Spring.
What John McCain didn`t realize was that Sarah Palin was his demographic. He thought he was appealing to younger women, and in fact, Sarah Palin appealed to people who were like McCain, old white guys, who thought she was sexy to skin a moose. That was a miscalculation, it didn`t work. They didn`t do the vetting, they didn`t do the polling.
The pitfall of what's happening in the media is if you're under thirty, you get your news from the Internet and The Daily Show, and there's not much discrimination between what they find on the front page of The New York Times and what they find on the Internet. That's not a bad thing, in the sense that people don't get spoon - fed anymore.
Not only are we going to New Hampshire ... we're going to South Carolina and Oklahoma and Arizona and North Dakota and New Mexico, and we're going to California and Texas and New York! And we're going to South Dakota and Oregon and Washington and Michigan. And then we're going to Washington, D.C. to take back the White House, Yeeeeeaaaaaargh!
I talked for a long time about that, what I call the hate wing of the Republican Party.And often been criticized for saying it. But there is such a thing, and it started in 1968 with the southern strategy developed by Richard Nixon to bring southern racists out of the Democratic Party and into the Republican Party, which they succeeded in doing.
What some men don't understand is that by opposing policies to reduce violence, promote equal pay and universal healthcare and voting to limit access to contraception and legal abortion, they are relegating women to another century, a time when men ruled exclusively and women were considered property and had to be guided by a firm masculine hand.
I learned that the American people are pretty great people. And they are just poorly served by their leadership, and Washington's very much out of touch with the struggles of ordinary Americans. My hope is that we'll have a Democratic Administration, and then we'll hold their feet to the fire so they start performing for people who put them there.
I think democracy fails under a variety of conditions and one of the conditions occurs when people don't have the ability to get the kind of information they need to make up their mind. Ideologically, I don't care much for FOX News. But the truth is that, as long as there are countervailing points of view available on the spectrum, it doesn't matter.
Touch-screen voting machines absolutely cannot be relied upon. Our recommendation was optiscan ballots - where you actually have custody of the actual ballots after the ballots have been passed through the computer. That's the most reliable system to use. And people should not use the electronic voting machines. Even electronic voting machines with paper trails can be manipulated.
I intend to talk about race during this election in the South because the Republicans have been talking about it since 1968 in order to divide us. And I'm going to bring us together. Because you know what? You know what? White folks in the South who drive pickup trucks with Confederate flag decals in the back ought to be voting with us and not them, because their kids don't have health insurance either and their kids need better schools too.
The path to a better future goes directly through our public schools. I have nothing against private schools, parochial schools and home schooling, and I think that parents with the means and inclination should choose whatever they believe is best for their children. But those choices cannot compete, and cannot come at the expense of what has been -- and what must always be -- the great equalizer in our society, a free and equal public education.
They believe the less votes the better. Republicans like to suppress votes because they believe they do better in small turnouts. Characteristically, Democrats would rather lose an election with a huge turnout than win one with a small turnout because we think that the values of democracy have to be placed above the interests of the party. The reason that Republicans are such failures at governing is because they place the interests of their party ahead of the interests of the country.
I confess to feeling continued ambivalence about political life, aware of its shortcomings and disappointments, but drawn back to it again and again because of its infinite promise. Justice can triumph, wrongs can be righted, and pain can be alleviated, if the right fix is found. The optimistic illusion that one can change the world is difficult to resist, especially when from time to time that illusion is sustained by even a hint of reality. Change does happen in the political process.
We owe something to the government to grow up in this great country. I'm tired of hearing people in the private sector talk like they don't owe the government anything. We do. This is a great country because we all pay into it. It's about time we all pay into it. ... If we paid the same amount of taxes we paid when Bill Clinton was president, I would be a happy guy, and the budget would be closer to balanced. You cannot give away money, whether you give it to rich or poor people. That's what George Bush did -- excuse me, trillions of dollars. You can't do that.