Heaven forbid we've got a problem where we could have prevented a terrorist attack or apprehended someone who is engaged in dangerous activity, but we didn't do so simply because of inaction in the Senate.

We must act, knowing that our work will be imperfect.

I think our basic principle that this is a free market system and that that has worked for us, that it creates innovation and risk taking, I think that's a principle that we've gotta hold to as well. But what I don't wanna do is get bottled up in a lot of ideology and is this conservative or liberal. My interest is finding something that works.

We shouldn’t have a bunch of politicians, a majority of whom are men, making health care decisions on behalf of women.

Excuses are tools of the incompetent used to build bridges to nowhere and monuments of nothingness

The brain is a body part too; we just know less about it.

Clem (Clementa Pinckney) understood that justice grows out of recognition of ourselves, in each other.