The separation of church and state can sometimes be frustrating for women and men of deep religious faith. They may be tempted to misuse government in order to impose a value which they cannot persuade others to accept. But once we succumb to that temptation, we step onto a slippery slope where everyone's freedom is at risk.

The great adventures which our opponents offer is a voyage into the past. Progress is our heritage, not theirs. What is right for us as Democrats is also the right way for Democrats to win.

My colleague Sen. Rick Santorum, Pennsylvania Republican, erroneously suggested that I support the teaching of intelligent design as an alternative to biological evolution. That simply is not true. ... Unlike biological evolution, intelligent design is not a genuine scientific theory and, therefore, has no place in the curriculum of our nation's public school science classes.

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

The AMA puts the lives and well being of the American citizens well below it's own special interest...It deserves to be ignored, rejected, and forgotten. No amount of historical gymnastics can hide the public record of AMA opposition to virtually every major health reform in the past 50 years....The AMA has turned into a propaganda organ purveying 'medical politics' for deceiving the Congress, the people, and the doctors of America themselves.

If I can leave a single message with the younger generation, it is to lash yourself to the mast, like Ulysses if you must, to escape the siren calls of complacency and indifference.

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.