The Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award, which highlights customer satisfaction, workforce empowerment, and increased productivity, has come to symbolize America's commitment to excellence.

I was not elected to produce a pile of vetoes.

When we put aside partisanship, embrace the best ideas regardless of where they come from and work for principled compromise, we can move America not left or right, but forward.

...the fact [is] that our borders leak like a sieve: those things cannot be permitted to continue in good conscience.

The purpose of affirmative action is to give our nation a way to finally address the systemic exclusion of individuals of talent on the basis of their gender, or race from opportunities to develop, perform, achieve and contribute. Affirmative action is an effort to develop systematic approach to open the doors of education, employment, and business development opportunities to qualified individuals who happen to be members of groups that have experienced long-standing and persistent discrimination.

I know that the precise magnitude and patterns of climate change cannot be fully predicted. But global warming clearly is a growing, long-term threat with profound consequences. And make no mistake about it, it will take decades to reverse.

We [Democrats] have got to be strong. When we look weak in a time where people feel insecure, we lose. when people feel uncertain, they'd rather have somebody who's strong and wrong than somebody who's weak and right.