If we invest in ourselves, the collective good, we all thrive.
— Cory Booker
You've got to be one that, wherever you are, like a flower, you've got to blossom where you're planted. You cannot eliminate darkness. You cannot banish it by cursing darkness. The only way to get rid of darkness is light and to be the light yourself.
We're not called to be a tolerant nation. We're called to be a nation of love.
Elections have consequences. So many people want to complain, but they don't want to vote. We can talk about Hillary Clinton. We can celebrate her; we can support her, but if we don't come out and vote for her, for shame.
When I go about my own politics, I meet Tea Party supporters who I can work with in Congress, that I find common ground with. I find Tea Party supporters who won't let me get a sentence out without judging me. To say that there is a 'Tea Party supporter' is a gross generality.
I thought that Donald Trump's ascendancy would end when he attacked John McCain, saying he's not a war hero. I found that shocking, for him to say that.
As a vegetarian eating a plateful of eggs, I found myself in this weird place where I didn't want to think about where those eggs came from. I didn't want to think about the treatment of the animals who produced those eggs. When I find myself trying not to think about things, it seems to me that I'm practicing avoidance.
When we embraced social media, we took more control of the Newark narrative. We increased responsiveness toward residents. We drew more of our constituents in to participate in government and improve our cities.
Let's not judge. Let's draw inspiration from each other's stories - successes and failures - and realize we're all connected.
We need to look at the totality of the things that we're labeling as violent and really examine whether we need to have some more proportionality in terms of the punishment fitting the crime that's done. The bright line that we have right now, between violent and nonviolent, does not account for shades of gray.
We're all tired of a Washington that has these partisan camps where nothing gets done.
The process of writing a book has given me a whole new reverence for writers. Mechanically, it is a brutal process; emotionally, it's incredibly healing.
These false barriers that we've erected of space and race, all these illusions that we've allowed to infect us like toxins, we've got to rid ourselves of that. We are a better nation when we are ultimately united in a common purpose and a common cause.
Listen, don't get my Jersey pride going. We are the most densely-populated state in America 'cause some many people who know the secret want to live there.
Americans, at our best, stand up to bullies and fight those who seek to demean and degrade others.
Patriotism is love of country. But you can't love your country without loving your countrymen and countrywomen. We don't always have to agree, but we must empower each other, we must find the common ground, we must build bridges across our differences to pursue the common good.
Generations of heroic Americans have made America more inclusive, more expansive, and more just.
I'm hopeful that at the end of my life, someone like Frederick Douglass would look at my life and say, 'Well done: you've proven yourself to be worthy of the legacy we left you.'
Don't give in to cynicism. It is a toxic spiritual state.
It's not hard to imagine Donald Trump leading us into a war just because somebody got under his very thin skin.
We have Donald Trump standing up as one of the greatest fear-mongers in this nation's history. He's trying to make us afraid of each other.
I've been wrong on everything about Trump; I've been wrong about everything on the Republican side of the ledger. But allow me - with that caveat - to made the prediction that Donald Trump will not be the president of the United States. It just will not happen.
There's too much judgment out there. Really what we need to be doing is just all of us finding our own paths towards living the best lives we can live as clearly and boldly in accordance with our own personal values. And that's what I'm trying to do.
I want to try to live my own values as consciously and purposefully as I can. Being vegan for me is a cleaner way of not participating in practices that don't align with my values.
Every sector of society looks at digital analytics in a productive way. Limiting my ability to use them is just unacceptable. And by the way, Congress conducts polls using traditional methods. No one is using social media analytics as a substitute for that.
I reject the idea that the guy who comes out of Yale and goes to work in the projects in Newark is good, and the guy who goes to work for a white-shoe law firm is bad. We're all mountain rangers. We all have peaks and valleys.
We live in a nation where, when New Jersey figures out how to do something and does it well, and shows progress, it affects other states.
I think Newark has been in the crosshairs in every generation of the fight to achieve America. And I think Newark is a city that's at that crossroads still.
'Hamilton' is one of the best things I've ever seen on a stage, and for a guy who loves American history, hip-hop and theater, it was pure bliss.
What most Americans don't realize is a lot of the challenges we're struggling with today are the result of conscious housing policies.
Let us declare that we are a nation of interdependence, and that in America love always trumps hate. Let us declare, so that generations yet unborn can hear us. We are the United States of America; our best days are ahead of us. And together, with Hillary Clinton as our President, America, we will rise.
America has seen enough of a handful of people growing rich at the cost of our nation descending into economic crisis.
I respect and value the ideals of rugged individualism and self-reliance. But rugged individualism didn't defeat the British, it didn't get us to the moon, build our nation's highways, or map the human genome. We did that together. This is the high call of patriotism.
May we all, as a nation of believers, fight for the achievement of America; may we make sacrifices worthy of those proud men and women who fought for us, labored for us, bled soil from the beaches of Normandy to the fields of Gettysburg for us.
It defies logic that protections against predatory debt collection practices don't apply to debt collectors hired by the federal government.
What we need to do is understand that we have to love each other, that we have to see each other have worth and dignity and value.
We must be agents of love.
The issues we hear Donald Trump talking about are just so contrary to who we are as a people. They are an affront and an insult to our higher angels and our best selves.
I know Donald Trump. I've met him; I know his family. I have love and friendship and affection for his family members. But I'm going to work very hard to ensure that he is not our president.
Life's too short not to try different things and to see what works for you and your body.
Innovators reimagine our world in so many areas. We need them to help reimagine what government can and should be.
When they told me I couldn't sit on the Senate floor with an iPad - that the technology wasn't even permitted - I breathed deep and knew that I was going to have to start pushing.
Small acts of decency ripple in ways we could never imagine.
I have never articulated a specific number, but I think a nation as great as we are, that professes to favor freedom and liberty, that we would find a way to evidence that in our criminal justice system by achieving what we know we can achieve: a reduction in crime, a reduction in taxpayer expense, and a reduction in the prison population.
I am happy that the urgency to reform our broken criminal justice system has found allies all across the political spectrum.
We are all innovators, we all like to use our imagination, which is our greatest tool.
In America, our differences matter, but our country matters more. That's the attitude I wanted to take to the Senate.
We have a presidential nominee in Hillary Clinton who knows that, in a time of stunningly wide disparities of wealth in our nation, America's greatness must not be measured by how many millionaires and billionaires we have, but by how few people we have living in poverty.
Tolerance says I am just going to stomach your right to be different. That if you disappear from the face of the earth, I am no better or worse off. But love - love knows that every American has worth and value, no matter what their background, race, religion, or sexual orientation.
Our nation was not founded because we all looked alike, or prayed alike, or descended from the same family tree. But our founders, in their genius, in this, the oldest constitutional democracy, put forth on this earth the idea that all are created equal; that we all have inalienable rights.
