The important thing to understand about legislators is that there are dozens of competing interests and issues that occupy them. They are stretched thin.

If I were John Bolton, I'd take great consolation in the words of my principal supporter on the committee, who gave a ringing endorsement, which was, There is no evidence that he has broken any laws.

The advantage that hospitals have over other institutions is that hospitals are community-based. You can't outsource your work; you can't move your emergency department to Pakistan.

In the 2004 presidential election, we saw a wonderful example of citizens making contributions. In fact, individual giving to both the Kerry and Bush campaigns was the highest in our nation's history.

The problem with smear campaigns is that too often they work.

Everybody who served in John Kerry's boat under his command, save one, has stood with him.

As Bill Clinton said so eloquently at the convention, during Vietnam there was a chance to serve; there was a chance not to serve.

John McCain was victimized in the South Carolina primary.

When you run for president of the United States, everybody does the same thing in the campaign-they talk about veterans, how much they admire them, how grateful they are.

John McCain has become the de facto running mate of George W. Bush.

John Kerry's biography was central to his campaign.

You can't have someone with a pinkie out there at the U.N. or any other place.

I didn't realize the president was such an historian.

What you have is two men seeking the White House; they're both products of prominent New England families. They both went to private boarding schools. They both went to a prestigious university.

The important thing to understand about legislators is that there are dozens of competing interests and issues that occupy them. They are stretched thin.

Let's not pretend that all of a sudden, this is some new system.

When the size of the group supporting your cause reaches a critical mass, any legislator or elected official has to pay attention.

George Bush says what John Kerry did was noble. Yet he sees him being savaged by his own supporters.

Iraq is in a civil war. There is no road in that country that is safe.

There's no question that Stalin broke the agreements made at Yalta completely about elections that were supposed to be held immediately in Poland, and Eastern Europe was plunged into slavery as a consequence.

There is always strength in numbers. The more individuals or organizations that you can rally to your cause, the better.

Character is destiny and character is important to American campaigns.

You've got people who didn't serve with John Kerry saying they did serve with John Kerry in the boat. With George Bush, we can't find anybody who did serve with him.

I think any advocate who is effective has fully acquainted himself or herself with the legislator they are going to meet. Know what committees they are on, what issues they are interested in, all in an effort to build a bridge for communicating with them.

Since the election, since the formation of a government, the death in Iraq has increased. The United States stands by, helpless to do anything about it. That's the reality, not George Bush's revisionist history!

George Bush is trying to play it both ways.

The Democrats have this high level of expectation of what government can do.

Human trafficking is a human tragedy. Its an outrage against any decent people.

I have done things politically, and I've been running a business at the same time, but I sort of joke that to some extent I do more than most legislators have done in their whole careers, and I've been doing it as a part-time job.

Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.

We're going to march on Washington with a host of Republicans, Democrats, business leaders, legislators.

Ideally citizens are to think of themselves as if they were legislators and ask themselves what statutes, supported by what reasons satisfying the criterion of reciprocity, they would think is most reasonable to enact.

It's not about the money. This is about Terri. It's not about the Schindlers, it's not about the legislators, it's not about me, it's about what Terri Schiavo wanted.

And, in the past, it has been all too easy for legislators to load costs onto business in order to meet broader social goals. And costs for business means costs for consumers.

I've been not only articulating the dissatisfaction with Albany, I've been acting on it. I've been very aggressive in bringing public integrity cases and public corruption cases and bringing cases against sitting legislators.

People underestimate the impact they can have on the process through contact with legislators. By being part of an organized group in an area that you have an interest in, you can multiply the impact of your own ideas.

When buying and selling are controlled by legislation, the first things to be bought and sold are legislators.

Let us tell our legislators in advance, that this is a right, restraints on which, we will not, cannot bear; and that every attempt to restrain it is a palpable wrong on God and man.

This source of corruption, alas, is inherent in the democratic system itself, and it can only be controlled, if at all, by finding ways to encourage legislators to subordinate ambition to principle.

The important thing to understand about legislators is that there are dozens of competing interests and issues that occupy them. They are stretched thin.

When the leaders choose to make themselves bidders at an auction of popularity, their talents, in the construction of the state, will be of no service. They will become flatterers instead of legislators; the instruments, not the guides, of the people.

What is the harm of doing the right thing? What is the harm of doing our job as legislators and making sure we do not stick the entire bankruptcy community with these provisions that do not make any sense?

The acknowledged legislators of the world take the world as given. They dislike mysteries, for mysteries cannot be coded, or legislated, and wonder cannot be made into law. And so these legislators police the accepted frontiers of things.

We live in a stage of politics, where legislators seem to regard the passage of laws as much more important than the results of their enforcement.

It has now become a very common sentiment, that there is some deep and radical wrong somewhere, and that legislators have proved themselves incapable of discovering, or, of remedying it.

I believe Congress has a duty to do so as well; not simply as a body of legislators, but more importantly as a community of friends, neighbors, parents and Americans.

Artists to my mind are the real architects of change, and not the political legislators who implement change after the fact.

But do not understand me as saying, or for one moment suggesting, that women legislators should confine themselves to doing only social service work. Not at all.

We asserted ourselves as a music community, and showed legislators that music is positive. Especially if you've sold 300 million records worldwide and pay taxes.