Dennis Kucinich
In the past week it has become clear that the vote on the final healthcare bill will be very close. I take this vote with the utmost seriousness. I am quite aware of the historic fight that has lasted the better part of the last century to bring America in line with other modern democracies in providing single payer health care.Collection: Health
When you have real power you don't threaten. People know what your capabilities are.Collection: Power
Everyone should have health insurance? I say everyone should have health care. I'm not selling insurance.Collection: Health
We have weapons of mass destruction we have to address here at home. Poverty is a weapon of mass destruction. Homelessness is a weapon of mass destruction. Unemployment is a weapon of mass destruction.Collection: Home
You know, I started my career in politics in 1967. I'm not new to this. I did not just fall off the Christmas tree. I understand the world is complex. I know that there are people out there who want to hurt other people.Collection: Christmas
My philosophy comes from a worldview that looks at the world as one. It's a holistic view that sees the world as interconnected and interdependent and integrated in so many different ways, which informs my politics.Collection: Politics
I am running for President of the United States to enable the Goddess of Peace to encircle within her arms all the children of this country and all the children of the world.
The tax code is not the only area where the administration is helping the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. It has spent $155 billion for an unnecessary war driven by fear.
Bush is going in the wrong way. And I dare say, that is what the strategy of his administration is, is just to wipe out government's purpose for any social and economic justice at all. And I'm going to take the country in an opposite direction than he's taking it.
I believe sincerely that we should bring in U.N. peacekeepers and bring our troops home.
Today we're faced with over 500 casualties, a cost of over $200 billion. And it could rise - the casualties could go into thousands and the cost could go over half a trillion - if we stay there for years.
This is a struggle for the soul of the Democratic Party, which in too many cases has become so corporate and identified with corporate interests that you can't tell the difference between Democrats and Republicans.
I think it's inconsistent to tell the American people that you oppose the war and, yet, you continue to vote to fund the war. Because every time you vote to fund the war, you're reauthorizing the war all over again.
I don't want to bash Bill and Hillary, because they're friends of mine, but I do have a difference of opinion about how to take back the House and the Senate.
I think we need to look for any opening we can to avoid a war and we shouldn't pass up any opportunity for resolution.
Iraq does not pose an imminent threat to the United States of any of its neighboring nations.
War can be so impersonal yet when we put a name, a face, a place and match it to families, then war is not impersonal.
I believe health care is a civil right.
I have worked to expand the health care debate beyond the current for-profit system, to include a public option and an amendment to free the states to pursue single payer.
But beyond all that, the question that is continually begged is why isn't America leading the way toward total abolition of nuclear weapons.
We tried war, we tried aggression, we tried intervention. None of it works. Why don't we try peace, as a science of human relations, not as some vague notion - as everyday work.
So actually war is politically profitable, financially profitable, morally depraved.
Oh, my family lived in 21 places before I was 17.
I think the Lord's Prayer is a very powerful prayer. And the prayer of St. Francis.
Anyone who really studies Catholicism deeply is aware of the mystical nature of our faith. Even references to Christ's mystical body has connections to that principle.
What I said was that in a democratic society, people must be permitted to make their choices and that the choices of women should not be subordinate to the choices of men, otherwise women are less than equal, are second-class citizens.
There are many people making a difference. I mean, Dr. King never held an office. Gandhi never held an office. There are people who are archetypes in our society who have never held office and made a difference.
I happened to have the privilege of serving in Congress. It will be 16 years at the end of this term. And I think I made a difference here on important issues.
Look, I've lost before. And there's always a tomorrow.
And my approach has always been to stand up and speak out on behalf of the economic rights of people.
In the Cleveland area, I have been instrumental in helping to save or create thousands of jobs. People know me there as a person who gets involved.
People are fed up with the politics where candidates just rip each other apart and then the voters lose in the end because no one really knows what anybody stands for.
I said in October of 2008 that there was no proof that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction or had the intention or capability of attacking the United States. Here we are. Almost 4,700 troops died, tens of thousands injured, over a million Iraqis dead. It will cost $5 trillion in the end for the war.
My political career goes back to the '60s and those were times of vigorous debates.
First off, I never favored a constitutional amendment to criminalize abortion or to overturn Roe v. Wade.
There's an ethical dimension to my life and all of our lives, from the time we get up in the morning to the time we sleep, including what we sleep on. So I don't separate my choices from ethical choices at any time.
Life should not be a funeral march to the grave. We should have the capacity for being able to lift up not just public dialogue, but lift up each other in a greater cause of nationhood.
The fact of the matter is we went after Iraq for oil. And the fact of the matter is that the United States has degraded our role as a great nation by attacking this nation that had no capacity to attack the United States and no intention of doing so, that didn't have anything to do with 9/11, didn't have weapons of mass destruction.
Peace is not just the absence of war, it is the active presence of a capacity for love and compassion, and reciprocity. It is an awareness that our lives are not to be lived simply for ourselves through expressing our individuality, but we confirm the purpose of our lives through the work of expressing our shared sense of community in a purposeful and practical way; to sustain our own lives we sustain the lives of others - in family, in a community of neighborhoods called a city, and in a community of nations called the world.Collection: Peace
Our vision of interconnectedness resonates with new networks of world citizens in nongovernmental organizations linking from numberless centers of energy, expressing the emergence of a new organic whole, seeking unity within and across national lines... If governments and their leaders, bound by hierarchy and patriarchy, wedded to military might for legitimacy, fail to grasp the implications of an emerging world consciousness for cooperation, for peace and for sustainability, they may become irrelevant.Collection: Military
We are on the path toward becoming the Sparta of the 21st century, armed to the teeth and without the capacity to care for our own people.Collection: People
Poverty is a weapon of mass destruction. Joblessness is a weapon of mass destruction, homelessness, a weapon of mass destruction... racism, a weapon of mass destruction, fear, a weapon of mass destruction. We must disarm these weapons and renew our commitment to quality public schools and dedicated teachers and good housing and quality health care and decent jobs and stronger neighborhoods.Collection: Teacher
We cannot avert our eyes without staining our souls.Collection: Eye
Wake up, America. The insurance companies took over health care. Wake up, America. The pharmaceutical companies took over drug pricing. Wake up, America. The speculators took over Wall Street. Wake up, America. They want to take your Social Security. Wake up, America. Multinational corporations took over our trade policies, factories are closing, good paying jobs lost. Wake up, America. We went into Iraq for oil.Collection: Wall
The Patriot Act allows Federal agents to look at public and university library patron circulation records, books checked out, magazines consulted, all subject to government scrutiny. There used to be a time in this country when we were worried whether our young people knew how to read. Now some in our government are more worried that government agents be able to find out what people are reading.Collection: Country
We must work toward the elimination of all nuclear weapons, and an end to policies which cause this country to move toward the weaponization of space.Collection: Country
Reclaim our environment from those who would destroy it with their predatory economic behavior.Collection: Environment
There is no reason why anyone in this country should be lacking health care when America has the resources right now. It would not cost much more than what we are paying right now. As a matter of fact, Americans are paying for a universal standard of care. They are just not getting it because it is all about corporations making a profit. It is not about people. Support Medicare for all.Collection: Country
Everyone has a right to a job, everyone has a right to an education, everyone has a right to health care, everyone has a right to retirement security, everyone has a right to housing, and everyone has a right to peace.Collection: Retirement
Peace is a condition of the heart. It's a state of mind, of tranquility, of calmness, and of centeredness. It's an understanding of the reciprocal nature of love, a presence, a journey. It's all of our aspirations. Peace is not a luxury or merely the absence of war, it's a kind of grace - which we're all entitled to as people who are alive. Peace is an active presence of the capacity for a higher evolution of human awareness.Collection: Peace