Cory Booker
Gender equality has long been at the forefront of my mind, and I think the Me Too movement has elevated many men's consciousness, my own included, about how to be better allies.Collection: Equality
I believe there's tremendous value in having a Supreme Court with a diverse set of experiences - especially when we're dealing with issues that range from our intimate relationships to how we finance campaigns.Collection: Finance
I think patriotism, by its very definition, is love of country. But we seem to have become a country where the highest thing we're reaching for is tolerance.Collection: Patriotism
These false barriers that we've erected of space and race, all these illusions that we've allowed to infect us like toxins, we've got to rid ourselves of that. We are a better nation when we are ultimately united in a common purpose and a common cause.Collection: Space
We have had in our nation a well-celebrated Declaration of Independence. But our success as a country will depend upon a new 'Declaration of Inter-dependence.' A belief in how much we need each other, how much we share one common destiny.Collection: Independence
Patriotism is love of country. But you can't love your country without loving your countrymen and countrywomen. We don't always have to agree, but we must empower each other, we must find the common ground, we must build bridges across our differences to pursue the common good.Collection: Patriotism
I respect and value the ideals of rugged individualism and self-reliance. But rugged individualism didn't defeat the British, it didn't get us to the moon, build our nation's highways, or map the human genome. We did that together. This is the high call of patriotism.Collection: Patriotism
Marriage equality is not a choice. It is a legal right.Collection: Equality
I'm a person that's grounded in faith and believe that my core values, motivation, inspiration, draw from a conception of the world in that way.Collection: Faith
If you look at great human civilizations, from the Roman Empire to the Soviet Union, you will see that most do not fail simply due to external threats but because of internal weakness, corruption, or a failure to manifest the values and ideals they espouse.Collection: Failure
I've taken on impossible fights before and won and I've done it not by taking on the tactics and techniques of demagogues and bullies but by calling people to our higher angels, calling to the moral imagination of communities about what we can be and what we can achieve together.Collection: Imagination
I know Donald Trump. I've met him; I know his family. I have love and friendship and affection for his family members. But I'm going to work very hard to ensure that he is not our president.Collection: Friendship
In America we have a Declaration of Independence, but our history, our advancements, our global strength all point to an American declaration of interdependence.Collection: Independence
When your country is in a costly war, with our soldiers sacrificing abroad and our nation facing a debt crisis at home, being asked to pay your fair share isn't class warfare - it's patriotism.Collection: Patriotism
Patriotism is a love of country. If you love your country, you should love your countrymen and women. It doesn't mean you always agree with them or even like them. It is understanding that we have interwoven destiny.Collection: Patriotism
Our platform calls for a balanced deficit reduction plan where the wealthy pay their fair share. And when your country is in a costly war, with our soldiers sacrificing abroad and our nation facing a debt crisis at home, being asked to pay your fair share isn't class warfare - it's patriotism.Collection: Patriotism
To me, feminism is believing in women's equality, and I ardently ascribe to that belief.Collection: Equality
You have to understand the Newark Riots - a lot of people understand that the pain was the initial explosion of anger and alienation, but after that, the response, sending the National Guard troops - a lot of violence was carried out and perpetrated by those who were allegedly coming here to protect residents.Collection: Anger
My family is no different from yours. We may be different from the geography that we come from. Some of you all may pray differently than I do, some of you all may be from a different ethnicity, but we all have the same story.Collection: Family
There was a small point in my life in law school, right before I moved to Newark, when I didn't know what I wanted to do, and I felt so lost.
I debated between law school and divinity.
I was born after the Civil Rights Movement. I never saw Martin Luther King alive.
The richness of America is that we are diverse. We're not Sweden. We're not Norway. We are a great American experiment. And as soon as we start trying to forget race or turn our back on race, number one, we don't confront the real racial realities that still persist.
I don't want to be a race-transcending leader. I want to be deeply understood as a man, as African- American, as a Christian, all that I am.
When I was just a twenty-something, I came to Newark, and I found a connection to the city in a spiritual way. I found a connection here and people here that reminded me so much of my roots and my own family.
I'm going to have setbacks and failures; I'm not going to see change right away all of the time or most of the time. But everybody I've ever respected has failed at one thing or another. I've definitely fallen on my face. But I've also had a comparatively easy life.
Everybody wants to find their soul mate, and I'm no different. That's definitely what I want in the future.
The joke I always make is I'm either running for reelection, running for Senate, running for governor, or running for my life. The latter is also a viable possibility.
I come from a mother who can cry at a G.E. commercial.
I want to be myself. I want to be as authentic as possible.
I don't know what the strategy will be in Washington. The reality is, is, I have got to go down there, as my mentor, as people like Bill Bradley have told me to do, get to know your colleagues on both sides of the aisle, recognize that they, too, beat with the same heart and the same type of blood.
Our nation was founded with a bunch of founding legislators who joined together to move our country out of the blocks and get us started, and every generation since then has found a way to advance the ball down the field.
These are the themes in life which are consistent in Judaism, Islam, Hinduism - of being grounded in who you are and being engaged in an unjust world.
My simple point is that I judge a person's faith by how they live their life, not by the tenets of their religion. I've watched the holiest of people walk past somebody in need or treat their staff mean. To me, the beauty of faith is only seen when people live it consistently or struggle to do so.
As a government leader, I'm not going to sit on the sidelines and watch all these other sectors innovate. I'm going to do everything I can as a leader to be in that innovation, to be a provocateur for that innovation.
My dad set a clear model for me for what manhood was all about.
My father passed away a few days before my election. This man, an African American born to a poor single mother in 1936 in the South, would worry in the last years of his life that he had better life chances when he was growing up than a young man born in the same circumstances would have today.
I'm intending to work on juvenile justice reform, sentencing reform, reentry, drug treatment, access to mental health care.
My generation of Americans, the scions of daring dreamers, the children of the fearlessly faithful and the offspring of many of history's most audacious actors - we, together, drink deeply from wells of freedom, liberty and opportunity that we did not dig.
One of the very hallmarks of our nation is the ideal of E Pluribus Unum. It is a concept that richly flows from the highest ideals of our nation.
We become distracted from productive labors by our perceived opponents; we become focused on them and not on our larger calling to advance our nation; our debate becomes more about scoring points against an adversary and less about advancing our common cause.
In college, I was a fiercely committed Democrat - a meeting with Jack Kemp, then Secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development, challenged my blind partisanship.
When American citizens pull together, there is little we can't accomplish.
Cities can become the engines that fuel our nation's growth and prosperity, and they can be wide gateways for families to achieve their own American dream of prosperity.
Cities can be places that represent the best of our ideals: where Americans of all different backgrounds can come together and, through their interactions, and even through their unity, spawn true American greatness.
I learned about community organizing from my parents. As a child, their stories were so instructive.
The change we seek for our nation is not the choice of an individual but must be the calling of a country.
After Yale Law School, I was proud to try to live up to my parents' example and began my career working for The Urban Justice Center in the streets of Newark, organizing residents to fight for better housing conditions.
If we cannot provide excellent educational opportunities to all children, safe communities, quality health coverage, or robust and fair avenues towards wealth creation, then our nation will increasingly be in peril.
Generations of heroic Americans have made America more inclusive, more expansive, and more just.