I was very productive as a senator for my state.

And frankly, being a woman I think gives me a slightly different take on a lot of the issues and on a lot of the solutions to the problems we face.

I think it does suggest that the American people really do want to listen to somebody who actually has some solutions, some answers, and gives them some hope.

We're failing our children with education, we're failing our environment.

People just want to hear some common sense... and I bring to bear the experience in local government and state government and national government - I was the first woman in history on the Senate Finance Committee - not to mention the diplomatic international experience.

I really think that's the key, part of the spiritual renewal that America needs to have, the notion that we really can have confidence in a better tomorrow.

Illinois has less than a 12 percent black population and I won with 55 percent of the vote.

I think the legacy of the civil rights movement is that now whites are more open to being represented by people of color or people who are women or, again, non-traditional candidates.

I think Americans want to believe in this country again.

I think if we are actually going to accept our generation's responsibility, that's going to mean that we give our children no less retirement security than we inherited from our parents.

I'd come back after having served as ambassador to New Zealand and found that I had real concerns about the direction in which this country was headed.

If we can rebuild Iraq, we can rebuild Illinois and Indiana and if we can do Baghdad, we can do Baltimore.

The reason that minorities and women don't have a better shot at getting elected to the Senate or to statewide office is because the campaign finance rules are so skewed as to make it very difficult for non-traditional candidates to raise the money necessary to get elected.

We must invest in infrastructure development and rebuilding communities to create jobs.

To me, that means getting back to the point where our Constitution means that you don't tap people's phones and poke into their e-mail and you don't arrest people and keep them hidden for a year and a half without charging them.

I want to rebuild America.

I was very productive as a senator for my state.

Magic lies in challenging what seems impossible.

New Zealand, by the way, where I was ambassador, has had two women prime ministers - one from either party.

I want people who believe in my message and where I am on issues to support me.

The really important victory of the civil rights movement was that it made racism unpopular, whereas a generation ago at the turn of the last century, you had to embrace racism to get elected to anything.

I'm used to people not paying me a whole lot of attention and underestimating me and, frankly, for me a big challenge is to have people believe that I can be the president of the United States.

It's not impossible for a woman - a Black woman - to become President.

The failure in Ohio to have adequate voting capacity for the people who were registered and eligible to vote was an absolute denial of their right to vote.

Well, if you pick a fight with somebody that's smaller than you and you beat them, where's the honor in that?

The notion that we won the war against Iraq is like saying we won a war against Arizona. I mean, the fact of the matter is it's not that big of a country. Nobody, I don't think, had any notion that we would do anything but win it.

Bush is giving the rich a tax cut instead of putting that cut in the pockets of working people.

The fact is that the diversity in this political class serves the same interest as diversity in any arena, which is it stirs the competitive pot.

I believe that our message of rebuilding America is one that will resonate with the American people.

There are a number of steps that we can take to reinvigorate and rebuild the economic and the physical infrastructure of our country and then to rebuild us, frankly, on a spiritual level.

I'm a results-oriented person and my Senate record shows that.

I think that we have a responsibility to make certain that we are fiscally responsible in order to assure, frankly, future generations don't have to pay our bills.

I'm committed to universal health coverage and education.

So I think that if we want to have a Congress, if we want to have government that looks like America, if we want to have government that is truly a representative Democracy, then we need to clearly address how we get our campaign laws out of the way of Democracy.

I was the only person of color in the Senate, and my colleagues were Strom Thurmond, Jesse Helms and Trent Lott.

All I really want to be is boring. When people talk about me, I'd like them to say, Carol's basically a short Bill Bradley. Or, Carol's kind of like Al Gore in a skirt.

Let me first state that I believe that marriage is a sacred union between one man and one woman.

We should have a State in which we could live and breathe as free men and which we could develop according to our own lights and culture and where principles of Islamic social justice could find free play.

In a very alert and bright state of society people learn co-operation by themselves, but in older and quieter conditions of laboring enterprise, such a bill as I propose will point out the way to mutual exertion.

The state should, I think, be called 'anesthesia.' This signifies insensibility.

No one is more important to the future of our state than our teachers.

But democracy isn't a state of perfection. It has to be improved, and that means constant vigilance.

It's slightly complicated for people to grasp the idea of a head of state in human form.

Similarly, the problem of the rights of the state in the disposition of inheritances left by individuals presents social aspects of the first importance.

The surest way to return to the people's business is to listen to the people themselves: We need to drop this whole scheme of federally controlled health care, start over, and work together on real reforms at the state level that will contain costs and won't leave America trillions of dollars deeper in debt.

An important part of what the state does is preserving its history.

All wars come to an end, at least temporarily. But the authority acquired by the state hangs on; political power never abdicates.

Let's say there are 500 sons and daughters like you in each state. Then we could control the government.

One gets into a strange psychological, almost hypnotic, state of mind while on the firing line which probably prevents the mind's eye from observing and noticing things in a normal way.