Women are on the outside when the door to the smoke-filled room is closed.

You may never reach a solution, but you're never absolved from the responsibility of trying.

A code of behavior is an inevitable part of life in any community, and if we hadn't inherited ours, we should have had to invent one.

The money that is spent in elections is absolutely unconscionable - even if it's private money. It's true that one's not corrupted by the expenditure of one's own money, but to some extent the system is. We cannot have a system in which the only people you can count on for a vote that doesn't look as though it might be a vote for a special-interest group are people with enormous fortunes.

Never feel self-pity, the most destructive emotion there is. How awful to caught up in the terrible squirrel cage of self.

The business of government is justice.

The curious fascination in this job [U.S. representative] is the illusion that either you are being useful or you could be -- and that's so tempting.