"Anyone who thinks they have a monopoly on truth, and there is only one way to see the world, always gets us into trouble."

"But I don't think the Democratic Party is at eye level with the middle class."

"Well, I think it's too early to call Fallujah a failure."

"You do have to change things as warfare changes."

"I want to attract the best people into teaching."

"If we are going to stay a great power and I hope and pray we will we need the truth. We need to know what is going right and we need to know what is going wrong. There is no greater time than now."

"I'd like to see the health care professionals making decisions, not some bureaucrat in Indianapolis working for an insurance company."

"Soft money will find its way and seep into the political system and corrode it, unless we plug every hole."

"You know, we have three branches of government. We have a House. We have a Senate. We have a President."

"In today's competitive economy, to stand still is to die."

"I made education the highest priority of my campaign - actually education and jobs - and the reason is a simple one: I think the future of America depends on it."

"If we say the Geneva Convention is obsolete, then what do others who have our soldiers say?"

"We are on the precipice of a crisis, a Constitutional crisis. The checks and balances, which have been at the core of this Republic, are about to be evaporated by the nuclear option. The checks and balances that say if you get 51% of the vote, you don't get your way 100% of the time. It is amazing, it's almost a temper tantrum."

"Arafat was a barrier to peace."

"Well, the tough thing for them is that the Republican primary is pretty far over to the right, just as the Democratic primary is further over to the left than the average voter in each party."

"We need to make sure middle-class people are able to pay the bills. We need to make sure that poor people don't starve. Those are values, too."

"America is a place where we all come together. It is a place of consensus."

"When one has success, the answer is not to undo that success. It is to continue what has been done."

"We tend to talk, Democrats, as a party, in legislative terms."

"Ideological warriors whether from the Left or the Right are bad news for the bench. They tend to make law, not interpret law. And that's not what any of us should want from our judges."

"A devastating commentary on the war in Iraq is that we have been unable to spend money on infrastructure."

"Whether you are a Democrat or Republican, whether you are a liberal or a conservative, we know that neither this President nor prior Presidents of both parties did everything right or we would not have had a 9/11."

"It is essential that all Americans take the time to honor and remember those individuals who gave their lives in defense of our liberty."

"I'm totally opposed to vouchers. I will fight them tooth and nail."

"Voters did say 'repeal health care,' they did say 'reduce the size of government.' But not a single one of them from the tea party or anywhere said 'give tax breaks to the wealthiest.'"

"Inaction is perhaps the greatest mistake of all."

"Democrats don't relate to middle-class people."

"So I want my kids to go to public schools because I think it's a better education overall."

"I think teaching should be an exalted profession, not a picked-on profession."

"I'm strongly for a patient Bill of Rights. Decisions ought to be made by doctors, not accountants."

"I went to the public schools myself. And they were great for me."

"I respect people who feel things passionately. I do. But when someone is a judge, that is not what they should bring to the bench. It is not really passion, except in rare instances, that serves the bench well. It is, rather, an ability to understand the law and follow it."

"But these days there are a lot of younger people who would like to go into teaching but don't because the economic opportunities are sometimes elsewhere."

"Do not let arguments of expediency persuade you. That is the slow road to oblivion. That is the tortured path to undoing step by step, bit by bit, as the river creates a canyon, the way of life that we love."

"Giving up even an ounce of precious freedom is a very serious thing to do."

"Let me say this, to all of the chattering class that so much focuses on those little tiny, yes, porky amendments - the American people really don't care."