African Americans

"I could only choose between being an outcast and being dishonest."

"I could feel the golden handcuffs of a comfortable but unfulfilling life snapping shut on my wrists."

"I had manufactured artificial goals as a means of motivating myself, using my longing for money, cars, and other material possessions to create a false sense of purpose. They had worked on me like spoonfuls of sugar- a jolt of energy that soon faded, leaving behind the pangs of a deeper hunger. I had cut myself off from the transcendent hope of religion, and now a vast and frightening expanse of uncertainty lay before me."

"I knew that until I was ready to tell the truth as I saw it, I was no better than a politician- but I didn't know whether I would ever be brave enough to break ranks and speak my mind."

"We must reject dictatorship in whatever form it takes — and especially when it rears its head in our own midst on the bench."

"While they complain about candidates pandering to special-interest groups, 217 years of this republic have shown that deep down people want candidates who strive to be all things to all men. People say they want office-seekers who are candid, frank, straightforward, genuine, who tell the truth even when it hurts. Who are on the up-and-up, guileless, unartful, undesigning, unequivocal. But nobody has won running on that platform, including Lincoln, FDR and Reagan, and you will be no exception. Voters elect only candidates who are deceptive, duplicitous, bluffers, cunning, crafty and Machiavellian. That's because voters want politicians like themselves. The media agrees. So why are you out of step? Thus, you've botched your campaign. You're going to lose by a landslide. I accuse you of being politically pure, clean, pristine, impeccable and untarnished. Your very presence embarrasses the system because you don't play by the historic rules."

"In other words, Alan Keyes was an ideal opponent; all I had to do was keep my mouth shut and start planning my swearing-in ceremony. And yet, as the campaign progressed, I found him getting under my skin in a way that few people ever have. When our paths crossed during the campaign, I often had to suppress the rather uncharitable urge to either taunt him or wring his neck."

"There was no doubt that the man could talk. At the drop of a hat, Mr. Keyes could deliver a grammatically flawless disquisition on virtually any topic. On the stump, he could wind himself up into a fiery intensity, his body rocking, his brow running with sweat, his fingers jabbing the air, his high-pitched voice trembling with emotion as he called the faithful to do battle against the forces of evil."

"A Keyes speech on the moral erosion of America is one of those transcendent experiences where you just have to be there. It's hard to explain how he touches the soul of an audience, and saying that he's 'silver-tongued' (as everyone does) only tarnishes the picture by inadequacy."

"The GOP is poised to nominate a candidate whose life could be used to illustrate the deceitfully seductive quality of sin summarized in the phrase "the glamour of evil.""

"Walter Kasper, a German cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church, said: "A democratic state has the duty to respect the will of the people; and it seems clear that, if the majority of the people wants such homosexual unions, the state has a duty to recognize such rights." So if the people of Germany voted tomorrow to renew the Holocaust, would the cardinal say the German state is duty-bound to re-open the death camps? That kind of spurious legalism helped goose-step Germany into Hell in the last century. Do German cardinals now propose to do the same to the Roman Catholic Church in this one? I must assume that Cardinal Kasper would join me in saying, "Forbid it, Almighty God!" He will probably bridle, however, at the temerity of comparing homosexuality to the Holocaust."

"It returns us to the dark ages of human oppression, which America was founded to remove humanity from, and it is the whole point of the push for homosexual marriage and homosexual rights. The aim is not compassion for homosexuals, respect for homosexuals and all of this; the aim in the mind of these hardheaded, calculating, leftist, Communist, totalitarians is to destroy the family and to establish the notion that once you have seized power there is no limit whatsoever to what you can do. If you want to tolerate abuses then those abuses can be imposed upon the people. Once you establish that, the abuses are then not going to be confined to egregious outrages like this; those abuses are going to be committed against the whole society and they will in the end include the murder of the masses as has occurred in all Communist regimes that existed."

"If you go down a road that satisfies your personal predilections and relationships and sacrifices the common good of the country, including the elementary institution by which its civilization is sustained, then you're not only derelict in your public duty, you are abandoning your obligation as a human being. And frankly, people throw around words like "crime against humanity", I think that kind of disregard for the God-endowed natural rights of human being is the archetype of all crimes against humanity, and I think we have an entire elite faction that is now committed to committing such a crime against the American people."

"The answer to crime is not gun control, it is law enforcement and self-control."

"The Assault Weapons Ban deals with a fictional distinction. You have guns that are exactly the same guns as are banned, in function, that were banned because of the way they look. And you know, that's the whole truth of this policy: it's to make politicians look as if they are doing something, when in point of fact, they are doing nothing."

"The gun control mentality is ruthlessly absurd. It suggests that you pass a law which will bind law-abiding citizens — they won't have access to weapons. Now, we know that criminals, by definition, are people who don't obey laws. Therefore, you can pass all the laws that you want, they will still have access to these weapons, just as they have access to illegal drugs and other things right now. That means you end up with a situation in which the law-abiding folks can't defend themselves, and the crooks have all the guns."

"I was asked by one of the reports whether or not I would call Mary Cheney a selfish hedonist. I didn't mention her name. See, one of the articles said I had mentioned her. This is not true. I didn't mentioned her. But leave that aside. All I said was, she had come forward as a lesbian, she identifies herself as someone who engages in homosexual sexuality. I have just said that by definition, it involves selfish hedonism. I can't change that. Now, it might be true [that] the argument I've just given is the best argument in support of the Republican plank on gay marriage that I think can be made. There are lots of other arguments that can be added, but, in principle, that's the best one because we need to understand that marriage is procreational sex, not recreational sex. Now, I want to tell you. If my daughter or anybody else engages in behavior that put them under that descriptive label, I will not consent to lie about it, and I will not tell the American people that I support a plank that requires this logic and then exempt my daughter from the logic that it requires."

"Selfish hedonism is not a pejorative. It is a description — an exactly accurate description of what is involved in homosexual relations."

"You can't build marriage on a foundation of selfish hedonism, because that would be to promise people only roses, and marriage is also thorns."

"It is a vocation, parenting, that is not just all about yourself, because it is all about that future you will never see. It is all about that happiness you will never enjoy. It is all about that person who will grow to a maturity, offering to the world a gift, one element of which may reflect a little contribution from yourself. But long before that gift is finally delivered, you will likely have shuffled off this mortal coil, and not be there to enjoy it. [Parenting] represents the possibility, which in the end is at the heart of the perpetuation of all our human community: the possibility that we will not live for ourselves alone, but will feel a deep and true connection, with a future we will never see, with a progeny we will never meet, but who, in our hearts' imaginations, we contemplate, with a sense of responsibility and obligation. Change the understanding of marriage, and you have changed the understanding of our character in such a way as to break our bond with that future, and to undermine that sense of responsibility."

"Sex itself only exists in relation to procreation. That's one of the reasons why I sometimes object — and it's just a theoretical objection, but it's worth thinking about — to the whole notion that one calls what people of the same sex do "sexual relations." As a matter of fact, they have precisely turned their back on sexual relations, in order to engage in acts of mutual pleasure that have nothing whatsoever to do with sexuality."

"I was reading an article about this case in California, where two lesbians were fighting over the custody of children that genetically were traceable to one, but which the other had raised. You know what? Nobody even thought about or mentioned, nobody asked a simple question about whether the father of those children should have any claim, because, very often in these relationships, they are conducted in such a way and conception occurs in such a way as to intentionally mask who the father might be, so that children must grow up without knowing who their father is. And that means that an incestuous situation could easily arise in our society, it's more than likely to arise--not to mention every other kind of incestuous complication."

"We have these two different understandings of human sexuality: the hedonistic, self-indulgent understanding, the self-interested one; and the one that has procreation at its heart, and that is characterized by the need to acknowledge responsibility and obligation. And just so no one will miss the point: the reason that homosexuality epitomizes the [first] one is that homosexuals are not haunted by the prospect or possibility of procreation — because they're simply not capable of it. I think this is pretty obvious, isn't it? And it was understood in human society at one point that if you're not capable of procreation, marriage doesn't have anything to do with you, because marriage is about procreation."

"The right response when, in the army, you are given an unlawful order, is to refuse that order. The right response of a chief executive in this state and in this nation, when faced with an order by a court that he conscientiously believes violates the constitution he is sworn to respect, is to refuse their order!"

"Now, you think it's a coincidence that on September 11, 2001, we were struck by terrorists an evil that has at its heart the disregard of innocent human life? We who have for several decades killed not thousands but scores of millions of our own children, in disregard of the principle of innocent human life — I don't think that's a coincidence, I think that's a warning. I don't think that's a coincidence, I think that's a shot across the bow. I think that's a way of Providence telling us, "I love you all; I'd like to give you a chance. Wake up! Would you please wake up?""

"I think the most important thing that G. W. Bush has done is what he's done that's good for America: he has stood against this country's enemies. I don't remember on September the 12th that we counted the bodies in terms of who was black and who was white. Thank God that day we remembered that we were all of us Americans — and G. W. Bush has been a president standing against that evil for the sake of all Americans."

"When we surrender moral government to the courts, we have surrendered the very essence of freedom, we have surrendered its only real meaning--and we will not be free again until we get it back."

"There is a difference between constitutional government and judicial dictatorship. And I think it's time we remembered that our Constitution was not put together in order to establish the sovereignty of the judges, it was framed in order to guarantee the sovereignty of the people."

"Without the basis in written law, and without the basis in our Constitution ratified by the people, judges can't make laws. And if we accept the notion that their dictates are law, then we have not only submitted to tyranny, we have abandoned a republican form of government."

"The idea of a terrorist attack that assaults innocent human beings in a building or a mall or a restaurant is bad enough. Yet the terrorist mind that looks at a passenger plane and sees the fuel and the intensity of the blast, and sees the rocket engines that will carry it into the heart of destruction like a cruise missile, but who does not see the humanity of one single soul on that airplane, is the chilling truth of what we're up against."

"The person you call 'President Obama" and I frankly refuse to call him that ... at the moment, he is somebody who is kind of an 'alleged usurper' who is alleged to be someone who is occupying that office without constitutional warrant to do so."

"We're in the midst of the greatest crisis we've ever seen and if we don't stop laughing about it and deal with it, we're going to find ourself in the midst of chaos, confusion and civil war. It's time we started acting like grownups."

"So I'm not even sure that he's President of the United States... neither are many of our military people now, who are going to court to ask the question "Do we have to obey a man who is not qualified under the constitution."

"Is he President of the United States? According to the constitution in order to be eligible for president, you have to be a natural born citizen. He has refused to provide proof that he is, in fact, a natural born citizen and his Kenyan relations say that he was born in Nairobi, at a time when his mother was too young to transmit US citizenship."

"[[Barack Obama|[Barack] Obama]] is a radical communist and I think it is becoming clear. That is what I told people in Illinois and now everybody realizes it is coming true. He is going to destroy this country and we are either going to stop him or the United States of America is going to cease to exist."

"The fundamental premise of liberalism is the moral incapacity of the American people."

"Remember we had a big debate about partial birth abortion? Well, here is a guy, who, in the Senate of Illinois, voted against a bill that was aimed at making sure that hospitals could no longer take babies who were born alive after a botched abortion — these are living babies, wholly separate from the mother, and are there in a nurse's arms, and in a case that I know of, the nurse is begging the doctors to please help, to do something for this child. And she is told to put the child aside, and let it die. That's not abortion. That is infanticide. That is the taking of a child's life. That is simply murder, by neglect. And there was a bill to stop it. And the United States Senate, in a similar bill, passed ninety-eight to zero. Even Teddy Kennedy and Barbara Mikulski could not find it in their abortion-seared consciences to vote for this practice. But Barack Obama voted to let it continue."

"I am locked in a race with someone who is continually described almost in Homeric fashion. The reason I say that is because Homer had this way of attaching epithets to all the characters, so he would never say Achilles, it would always have to be "Valorous, Brave Achilles" or something, or "Swift Footed Achilles" and things of this kind. He would never say Odysseus, it was always "Manly Wild Odysseus" or something; he would always have a little name in front. And you've noticed that my opponent Barack Obama, the media always puts a little epithet in front of him. "The Democrat Rising Star, Barack Obama," "Rising Star Barack Obama." And they tell me that they are not biased. I'm locked in a little battle with the Illinois media right now, because I've had the nerve to identify them as minions of the Democrat party. And they are all upset with me about this — but I have this bad habit of opening my eyes and seeing what's in front of them."

"Hillary Clinton pursued an agenda of clear personal ambition. She fished around among the different states in the union, decided which state would be the best object of her personal ambitions, fomented interest in that state for the sake of her personal agenda. She was a sitting First Lady at the time, so there was even some overtones of intimidation involved in all of that, and she simply used and abused the state as a platform of her personal ambition. Quite the contrary, I had no thought whatsoever of running for the U.S. Senate in the State of Illinois. I have been called in by a decision of the people in Illinois who say that they need my help. That's their choice, and that respects the sovereignty of the people because they have made the determination that they need outside help."

"Hillary Clinton did what she did for the sake of her agenda of personal ambition, carefully planned and worked out over months in which she was using and abusing the state of New York — because she looked at several other states--as a platform for her personal ambition. I, on the other hand, have responded to the call of the people of Illinois who have asked me to come and help them with a crisis situation. It doesn't violate my principal understanding of federalism, because federalism has two parts: state sovereignty and national unity."

"On all the matters that touch upon the critical moral issues, Arnold Schwarzenegger is on the evil side. This is a fact. A mere list of the positions he supports is enough to make this plain: abortion as a "right," cloning of human beings, governmental classification of citizens by race, public benefits for sexual partners outside of marriage, disrespect for property rights against environmental extremism, repudiation of the right to bear arms — no more need be said to show that this candidate is wrong where human decency, human rights and human responsibility bear directly on political issues. Last week, we saw Schwarzenegger does not deny habitual crude offenses against young women. Rather, he theatrically, vaguely and impersonally apologizes for them, before a roaring crowd of adoring fans, admitting neither any connection between action and character, nor any need for genuine penance or reformation. The Republicans who vote for Schwarzenegger will owe Bill Clinton an apology for having given the nation the impression that they sincerely believed character to be an issue for those claiming high office."

"God's irony: that in order to fight and defeat the threat of terrorism, we shall have to be clear about the principle of justice that allows us to understand what is evil in terrorism. And that principle of justice is the claim of justice that is inherent in every innocent human life. But if that claim was there in the Twin Towers, if it was there on the airplanes that those terrorists attacked, you explain to me why it is not there in the womb!"

"A callous disregard for the claims of innocent human life is the heart and soul of the evil of terrorism."

"I will stand against those who see terrorism when Americans die, but who see suicide bombers who kill Israelis and believe that that is just part of the negotiating process."

"Every leader, and every regime, and every movement, and every organization that steps across the line to terrorism must be banished from the discourse of civilized human life."

"Our success or failure is not in the hands of our leaders. It is in our hands."

"There are times we don't want to hear about the need to temper our best hopes in order to achieve our most vital security. But we still need to do it. Before we can triumph, we must survive. Before liberty can prevail, the possibility of liberty must be preserved."

"Harden our hearts to the innocents in the womb, and we have hardened our hearts to the need for compassion, and mercy, and fellow-feeling, and charity, and decency in this world."

"At the root of the assault on our liberties is, in fact, an assault on our character--an assault that assumes that we are not good enough to be free, and that aims to make sure that we are no longer strong enough, courageous enough, disciplined enough to be a free people."

"From the time of the Revolutionary War, when citizens stood forward to defend their liberties against the depredations of tyranny, all the way through Civil War, through the great World Wars, this nation has been defended by the tradition of common ordinary folks who come from behind the plow, come from the store-clerking, come from the classrooms to get on the battlefields — ordinary citizens turned into heroes in defense of their liberty, because that's the potential of freedom."