I'm a competitor. And I don't want to say, hey, just because this person is a woman or this person is a minority, that they're not going to get the white male vote.

I have my rights, not because of Washington suddenly deciding, Strom Thurmond and others, "Hey, let's give certain Americans equal rights." But because of the ardent, unyielding voice of protesters.

No matter what, we always have the power to choose hope over despair, engagement over apathy, kindness over indifference, love over hate.

If you want the things people don't have, you have to do the things other people will not do.

One of the very hallmarks of our nation is the ideal of E Pluribus Unum. It is a concept that richly flows from the highest ideals of our nation.

Here, we have a country that is making its veterans, people who are struggling with post-traumatic stress, people who are struggling with depression, who often they're only hope is their access to marijuana to treat these illnesses, and here we are criminalizing them for doing what's necessary to stabilize their lives as a result of their service. This is not who we are as a country. We are better than this.

I sit in the Senate, and see what Republicans are often advocating, it's those kind of tax loopholes for the richest of the rich or, frankly, for corporations and giving incentives for them to move jobs and opportunity overseas.