It is extraordinary that each of the three individuals this president [ George W. Bush] has nominated for the Supreme Court - Chief Justice [John] Roberts, Harriet Miers and now Judge Alito - has served not only as a lawyer for the executive branch, but has defended the most expansive view of presidential authority.

Through periodic increases over the next three decades under Democratic and Republican administrations alike, the nation achieved one of the fundamental goals of a just society, which is that no one who works for a living should have to live in poverty.

The more our feelings diverge, the more deeply felt they are, the greater is our obligation to grant the sincerity and essential decency of our fellow citizens on the other side.

In the United States Senate, one of the things I observed in the early days - and it's still used - and that is that you take someone's argument and then you misrepresent it and misstate and disagree with it. And it's very effective. I've done it myself a number of times. But eventually, eventually people catch on.

It's better to send in the Peace Corps than the Marine Corps.

I won't yield to anyone about guns in our society. I know enough about it.

Earlier this week ... scientists announced the completion of a task that once seemed unimaginable; and that is, the deciphering of the entire DNA sequence of the human genetic code. This amazing accomplishment is likely to affect the 21st century as profoundly as the invention of the computer or the splitting of the atom affected the 20th century. I believe that the 21st century will be the century of life sciences, and nothing makes that point more clearly than this momentous discovery. It will revolutionize medicine as we know it today.