“And some talk is floating around right now about merit-based immigration. Individuals like my parents would have been at the bottom, the end of the line, and would perhaps never have had an opportunity, and yet they helped build the agriculture sector.”
“Doing that mental exercise of seeing if you could rephrase somebody else’s argument in your own words—that alone might be one of the single most useful things that you can do to reason better and to respond to people’s arguments better.”
“So I’m going to answer your question, but I want to preface it by saying most people do not vote on policies. They think they do, but they don’t. Even smart, educated people who think they do even more so don’t.”
“When I’m speaking of a good society, I’m not necessarily speaking of a good society in the 21st century. I’m speaking of a kind of good society that we have a blueprint to make, that is, in turn, written in our genes.”
“One thing is for sure in Washington is, no matter how tight or tough times are, veterans are a class to themselves; they are an issue to themselves. Partisanship rarely ever creeps into the VA.”
“So Buttegieg, in what that reveals of him, is that he’s a classic puppet of the military industrial complex.”
“Photojournalism—and photography in general—is based on a trusting relationship: the relationship between the photographer and the subject. And, in order to really get several layers deep, the photographer needs to reveal their sensitive side.”
“In my district, I wasn’t just Tom Davis—I was ‘Mr. Woodrow Wilson Bridge.’ I was the guy who closed Morton and got 3,000 acres donated to the county. Those were the kinds of tangible efforts where people may not like my party, but they saw some redeeming qualities in me to keep me around.”
“In my opening statement I said, ‘In thirty years of public service, I never had a scandal.’ The murmur of boos in the audience—I guess they saw that as a dig at the other candidates.”
“I told one of the other senators, ‘You’re a very pleasant, sweet person. But deep down, the public wants a son-of-a-gun. You’ve got to get stuff done.'”
“Most of all, I just want my constituents back home to know that I’m working for them, and that I’m not thinking about contributions from a big corporation when I’m in a committee hearing and questioning witnesses and when we’re voting on matters that are important to the working families in my district.”
“There’s not a single one of us who has not made mistakes in our lives, and we have a number of people who were in jails and prisons that made mistakes that they regret.”
“It’s harder to demonize somebody if your kids are playing on the soccer field together, and you’re out there on a weekend afternoon.”
“It’s hard to point to me as an anti-gun person. I’ve got a gun safe full of them! Every year, when we have the competition for skeet, trap, and sporting clays, Democrats vs. Republicans, I always walk away with the trophy.”
“On campuses so far, I have been pleasantly surprised that I have been invited to talks that have been well-received and civil.”
