I'm not one that believes that affirmative action should be based on one's skin color or one's gender, I think it should be done based on one's need, because I think if you are from a poor white community, I think that poor white kid needs a scholarship just as badly as a poor black kid.

Death and taxes may be inevitable, but they shouldn't be related.

My work in the House of Representatives, at this time in my life, is completed. It is time to return home.

I like to call the ethos I grew up with 'Oklahoma values.' But you'd be just as accurate if you said 'American values.' Except for our lack of a seacoast, Oklahoma has a little bit of just about everything that's American.

I would caution all of us or I would remind all of us that any candidate that we support, they are going to be flawed.

I was taught to respect everyone for the simple reason that we're all God's children. I was taught, in the words of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.... to judge a man not by the color of his skin, but by the content of his character. And I was taught that character...is simply doing what's right when nobody's looking.

We need to remember that politics is all about people, not programs. We shouldn't want to take the humanness out of the political arena.