Strong efforts have been made in Ohio to curb the authoritarianism of our Secretary of State, Kenneth Blackwell, as he has purged people from lists in our State in particular precincts where voters are heavily minority.

We came from a family where we ran our own small business. Our dad made his own products. We made our own sausages, our own meatloafs, our own pickles. Dad had to do everything himself. He had to figure out how to finance his business.

Without a doubt, first thing we should do is clean up our fiscal house, and that starts with balancing our budgets and digging out of this red ink. We cannot expect to continue in this fashion and remain the leader of the free world.

Who owns the assets of our Nation? Increasingly, foreign interests own our assets, and we owe them money. No wonder people think our country is headed in the wrong direction. It is.

Increasingly, Americans don't own America.

America is becoming more and more dependent upon imports from foreign manufacturers than we are exports from our country in all fields: in appliances, in clothing, even food. This year America may become for the first time in its history a net food importer.

As I watch what is happening in the Middle East and the carnage that comes over our television screens every evening, I cannot help but ask myself, what is wrong with humankind that we cannot stop the killing?

Strong efforts have been made in Ohio to curb the authoritarianism of our Secretary of State, Kenneth Blackwell, as he has purged people from lists in our State in particular precincts where voters are heavily minority.

We have seen voters denied their rights in recent elections as they have been incorrectly purged from lists, their absentee votes not counted, and voting machine integrity and security not assured.

These Americans are among the working poor with full-time jobs earning $5.15 an hour. Millions fall into this boat, even more when you consider that the poverty line has not been adequately adjusted to reflect the true level of poverty in this country.

People are rapidly losing hope and trust. They believe their government has been captured by special interests and no longer cares about them, and they are right.

Since President Bush took office, we have lost 3 million more good jobs.

People who go to work every day and perform the services essential to keeping our economy functioning deserve to live above the poverty level.

In fact, our monthly trade deficit figure is so huge it equals the entire annual budget of our Department of Veterans Affairs. Veterans fought to make us free from foreign tyranny, but the new tyranny is taking a different form.

I grew up in a family where our mother made our clothing. We didn't have a lot of money, so we learned how to scrimp, and we learned how to invent and to create. And those are learned skills.

That level of trade deficit throttles real growth in our country and continues the unfortunate path of selling out America. We are not winning the global trade war, we are losing it badly.

A market where chief executive officers make 262 times that of the average worker and 821 times that of the minimum-wage worker is not a market that is working well. And it is surely not working well enough to build a solid middle class.

For me, appropriations bills are the glue. These are the bills that must move, no matter what, to keep the government functioning as a reliable element of our society. The Appropriations Committee shouldn't be the most political place to be; it's the place where we have to make the institution function for the country.

I believe America's chief strategic vulnerability is our dependence on imported petroleum.

I have an ability to work collegially across a wide range of interests in the caucus and in the Congress, and an ability to work on a bipartisan basis. Appropriators pride themselves on that.

I think food and education will help stem the poverty of the young people who are being drawn into terrorism every day.

I view myself as someone who is always trying to make life better in practical ways and putting the pieces together to do that.

I wholeheartedly support the aspirations of the Ukrainian people for a democratic, free and just society where the rule of law prevails without corruption or government violence directed against citizens.

One could say that Osama bin Laden and these non-nation-state fighters with religious purpose are very similar to those kind of atypical revolutionaries that helped to cast off the British crown.

The economy may be complex, but Americans understand that the Wall Street banks control an outsized portion of the economy and that they have an outsized interest in their own profits.

We have to get rid of the constant fundraising that happens inside the Congress. Before, political parties used to raise money; now, individual members are raising money through the DCCC and the RCCC. It is absolutely corrupt.

When Lincoln ran into trouble during the Civil War, he got new generals. He brought in Grant. I hope that President Obama will bring in some new generals on the financial front.

Clearly no one knows what leadership has gone undiscovered in women of all races, and in black and other minority men.

As far as I know, only a small minority of mathematicians, even of those with Platonist views, accept the idea that there may be mathematical facts which are true but unknowable.

When you put a tiny and despised minority up for a popular vote, the minority usually loses.

I voted for the Defense of Marriage Act but I do not believe we should institutionalize a form of discrimination against any minority by amending the Constitution.

Invention consists in avoiding the constructing of useless contraptions and in constructing the useful combinations which are in infinite minority.

The third-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking with the majority. The second-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking with the minority. The first-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking.

When you use the term minority or minorities in reference to people, you're telling them that they're less than somebody else.

Truth always originates in a minority of one, and every custom begins as a broken precedent.

In his years in Washington, Senator Kerry has been one vote of a hundred in the United States Senate - and fortunately on matters of national security he was very often in the minority.

If you want to be a government in a minority Parliament, you have to work with other people.

Historically, the judicial branch has often been the sole protector of the rights of minority groups against the will of the popular majority.

Today, the theory of evolution is an accepted fact for everyone but a fundamentalist minority, whose objections are based not on reasoning but on doctrinaire adherence to religious principles.

The Constitution gives the president the power to appoint, upon the advice and consent of a majority of the Senate, and it plainly does not give a minority of senators any right to interfere with that process.

The Sixth Sense is not a good white film. Insomnia is not a good white film. They're just good films. So why we can't we have good films that happen to have black people, or Asian, or Latino, or any other minority group in them?

When you belong to a minority, you have to be better in order to have the right to be equal.

Your political system is actually too democratic. The fact that Americans vote on every bill and proposition can prolong bigotry indefinitely, especially where it is aimed at minority groups.

In recurring episodes over the next couple of decades, the minority view gradually won. A profusion of factors differentiates each case from the others, including naked partisanship on both sides, but the trend has been clear.

We cannot ignore the disparity in resources that continue to plague many of our school systems, especially those serving predominantly inner-city minority and impoverished children.

There is no obstacle in the path of young people who are poor or members of minority groups that hard work and preparation cannot cure.

Many are called but few are chosen. There are sayings of Christ which suggest that the Church he came to establish will always be a minority affair.

And I think that we in America need to understand that many schools need improvement, and particularly with respect to how they're serving minority children.

The majority is always wrong; the minority is rarely right.