Mayors From The United States

"We are a part of this take-down culture where people are trying to twist your words."

"The "power of the people" is greater than the "people in power" ... Change does not come from Washington, it comes to Washington."

"You encouraging me means more to me than you can imagine (After Jimmy Carter hoped Booker run for president)."

"The vicious attack on actor Jussie Smollett was an attempted modern-day lynching. I'm glad he's safe. To those in Congress who don't feel the urgency to pass our Anti-Lynching bill designating lynching as a federal hate crime– I urge you to pay attention."

"There is great dignity in work – and in America, if you want to provide for your family, you should be able to find a full-time job that pays a fair wage. The federal jobs guarantee is an idea that demands to be taken seriously. Creating an employment guarantee would give all Americans a shot at a day’s work and, by introducing competition into the labor market, raise wages and improve benefits for all workers."

"I’m not here to tell folk just what they should know, I’m here to call on folk to understand that in a moral moment, there is no neutral. In a moral moment, there is no bystanders. You are either complicit in evil, you are either contributing to wrong, or you are fighting against it."

"I’m a big believer that if America, if this country hasn’t broken your heart, then you don’t love her enough. Because there’s things that are savagely wrong in this country."

"I miss Kamala, I miss Cory. Though, I think Cory will be back!"

"If Cory Booker is the future of the Democratic Party, they have no future! I know more about Cory than he knows about himself."

"The contrast between the Republicans’ laser-focus on creating jobs, allowing workers to keep more of their hard-earned paychecks, and the safety of our communities, and the message of big-government socialism and open borders folks will hear at Netroots Nation from coastal elites like ... Cory Booker ... could not be more stark ... While Senator Cory Booker called the policies that created this windfall for workers “reckless, unjust, and just plain cruel,” Americans everywhere are seeing more money in their paychecks and new opportunity to achieve the American Dream."

"He has done lots of stunts designed to make people aware of poverty, or at least to make people aware of Cory Booker's awareness of poverty."

"Cory Booker has dedicated his life to the work of building hope and opportunity in communities where too little of either existed."

"You have to learn to be black, and we don’t have time to teach you."

"I don’t want a Disneyfication of our history. I don’t want to whitewash history. I don’t want to homogenize history. Tell me the wretched truth about America, because that speaks to our greatness."

"Unnecessary hardship is being borne by Americans of all backgrounds; our institutions are being recklessly and unconstitutionally attacked and even shattered. In just 71 days, the President has inflicted harm after harm on Americans' safety; financial stability; the foundations of our democracy; and any sense of common decency. These are not normal times in our nation. And they should not be treated as such in the United States Senate. The threats to the American people and American democracy are grave and urgent and we all must do more to stand against them. Generations from now will look back at this moment and have a single question — where were you?"

"... many millions of Americans are literally going to be hurt, because when they are sick, they will not be able to afford to go to the doctor. When they go to the Emergency Room, the lines will be 2 times as long. We are in a crisis. We need a president to stand up, and bring us together to help to solve the problems of the American people."

"I got a chance to witness firsthand what I think many people in America can relate to, is when you show up in a room qualified, when you show up in a room with extraordinary expertise and credentials, there are a lot of Americans who know that hurt, that you are still going to be treated in a way that does not respect to you fully"

"I don’t think most Americans realize that the way we raise animals is such a betrayal of the heritage of our grandparents. I don’t think they realize that … these big companies like and and others have our American farmers now living like in constant debt, forced to follow their rules. I’ve watched the suffering in North Carolina of minority communities who live around and can no longer breathe their air … and I’ve seen workers in the meatpacking plants and how dangerous those plants are. Everybody is losing in this system – except for the massive corporations that have taken over the American food system."

"... marijuana in our country is already legal for privileged people ... the war on drugs has been a war on black and brown people."

"We cannot let these conversations devolve into the impotent simplicity of "Who is or is not a racist?" Because, if the answer to the question "Do racism and white supremacy exist?" is "yes", then the real question is not "Who is or is not a racist?", but "Who is or is not doing something about it?""

"You are dipping into the Kool-aid and you do not even know the flavor (After Joe Biden criticized Booker's anti-crime work as Newark mayor)."

"Working Americans would tell you that the dignity of work is being stripped ... they are working harder than their parents and falling further behind ... while their salaries may moderately have gone up, what has gone up more is the cost of prescription drugs ... child care ... college ..."

"Sometimes you go in the pit before you go to the palace, right? You know? And that was the story of Saint Joseph ... Martin Luther King was slain, they wrote the words from Joseph's brothers when they threw Joseph in the well ... "Behold, here cometh the dreamer. Let us slay him, and see what becomes of his dream". Now, King has fallen but his dream has not died, and we are the keepers of the dream. And so, do not give up hope, do not give up faith, alright?"

"I respect and value the ideals of rugged individualism and self-reliance. But rugged individualism didn’t defeat the British, it didn’t get us to the moon, build our nation’s highways, or map the human genome. We did that together."

"What would you do if you could not fail. Answer that question and do that."

"Most people think that these high-density poor neighborhoods, predominately people of color, just came about through some accident of history, but they were the conscious creation [of institutional racism]."

"We make a grave mistake when we assume this spirit of connectedness is automatic or inevitable. It is not a birthright. A united country is an enduring struggle. It takes collective work and individual sacrifice. It is not enough to call on others or wait for a leader to emerge who will exalt our national values. I believe this is the question we face, as citizens of this nation: what will we do to affirm this most critical American virtue?"

"Cynicism about America’s current state of affairs is ultimately a form of surrender."

"I want to try to live my own values as consciously and purposefully as I can. Being vegan for me is a cleaner way of not participating in practices that don’t align with my values. … As soon as I said publicly that I was trying this experiment, so many vegans out there, hundreds and hundreds of people, have been reaching out to me with incredible support and encouragement as well as practical tips of how to do this without having to sacrifice that much in terms of the food and what I like. I've discovered some really delicious things—recipes, stores, and restaurants—that have made this transition far easier. … There's too much judgment out there. Really what we need to be doing is just all of us finding our own paths towards living the best lives we can live as clearly and boldly in accordance with our own personal values."

"We prove worthy of the privileges that we have not by paying anything back, but by paying it forward."

"Immediately I knew that was problematic [being paired on a television show with John Lewis]. Because the show starts with our bios, and it starts with, ‘John Lewis, hero of the civil rights movement stood on the Edmund Pettus Bridge. … He literally bled the southern soil red. And then it goes to me. ‘Cory Booker, riding his Big Wheel in affluent suburbia, falls off and skins his knee: He bled the New Jersey soil red.’ And so you are very aware if you were born after the civil rights movement, if you were born in my generation, that you stand on the shoulders of giants."

"We are brick city. We are like bricks themselves. We are strong. We are resilient. We are enduring."

"The reality is we have to make sure that we have a military that’s prepared, but right now, we have more military spending than the next 10, 11, 12 countries combined, and we’ve got to start realizing that we can secure and protect ourselves, but also be responsible in the way that we do that," Booker said. And it’s not unpatriotic to say that we’re spending too much money. In fact, to me, that’s the patriotic thing to say."

"Lets you and I try to live on food stamps in New Jersey (high cost of living) and feed a family for a week or month. U game?"

"We say an oath that we are a nation of liberty and justice for all, but that’s just words. It’s a civic faith, but I’m one of these people that says before you, "tell me about your religion, first show it to me in how you treat other people." Well, how are we living our civic gospel? How are we living our civic gospel that demands for us to reject the normalcy of injustice, the normalcy of apathy, the normalcy of indifference, and rise to the higher ground of activism, of engagement, of love?"

"When ignorance and bigotry is allied with power, it is a dangerous force."

"This new party was made up of Northern men from the ruins of the old Whig party, the Free-Soil Democracy and all friends of true republican liberty who desired to see the Sham Democracy overthrown, and the National Government brought back to the principles of Washington and Jefferson and the fathers of the Republic."

"Whatever might have been the motive, few acts have ever been so barren of good, and so fruitful of evil. The contest has exasperated the public mind. North and South, and engendered feelings of distrust, and I may say hate, that I fear it will take years to wear away. The lamentable tragedy at Harper's Ferry is clearly traceable to this unfortunate controversy about slavery in Kansas.; and while the chief actor in this invasion has exhibited some traits of character which challenge our admiration, yet his fanatical zeal seems to have blinded his moral perceptions, and hurried him into an unlawful attack upon the lives of a peaceful and unoffending community in a sister State, with the evident intention of raising a servile insurrection, which no one can contemplate without horror; and few, I believe very few, can be found so indifferent to the consequences of his acts, or so blinded by fanatical zeal, as not to believe that he justly suffered the penalty of the law which he had violated. The Whig party North and South having been completely broken up by the perpetration of this great wrong, and the subsequent attempt of the slave power, backed up by the President of the United States, to force slavery upon an unwilling people in Kansas, and by fraud and violence to make Kansas a slave State, a new phase was given to public affairs and to the parties in the country. The Democratic party became greatly divided and distracted by this outrage, and would also have been entirely demolished, if Southern States had not rallied to the support of that party. All the Southern States, with the exception of Maryland, having gone over to the support of the Democratic party, and the aggressions of the Southern propagandists of slavery in their attempt to send slavery everywhere, the Democratic party became essentially a Southern sectional party, inasmuch as very few public men South, of either party, could be sustained by their constituents in opposing these outrageous measures in Congress, and the frauds and rascalities committed in Kansas. All the compacts, resolutions, and agreements, to keep the peace, so recently made, having been broken, confidence was greatly impaired, indeed I may say entirely destroyed, in the Democratic party, and in this state of things a new party was formed, called the Repuulican Party, to resist the Democratic party in its new and alarming attitude of pro-slavery aggression."

"Suddenly, and without the least necessity or provocation, the country was startled with a proposition to reopen the slavery agitation in a more aggravated form than ever before. The Kansas-Nebraska bill was introduced by Senator Douglas, Chairman of the Committee on Territories, sustained as a Democratic measure by President Pierce, and adopted by Democratic and Southern Whig votes. The bond of peace agreed to in 1850-51-52, was broken, and broken, too, by the very men who had pledged themselves not again to agitate the slavery question. … After a severe struggle, which threatened the integrity of the Union, Congress finally passed laws settling these questions; and the Government and the people for a time seemed to acquiesce in that compromise as a final settlement of this exciting question; and it is exceedingly to be regretted that mistaken ambition, or the hope of promoting a party triumph, should have tempted any one to raise this question again. But in an evil hour this Pandora's box was again opened by what I conceive to be an unjustifiable attempt to force slavery into Kansas by a repeal of the Missouri compromise, and the floods of evils now swelling and threatening to overthrow the Constitution, and sweep away the foundation of the Government itself, and deluge this land with fraternal blood, may all be traced to this unfortunate act."

"The Republican Party insists that slavery originated in force, by the stronger against the weaker party, and not by natural right; that it is maintained and upheld by oppression and wrong, and against the law of nature. This usurped ownership in man is not that kind of property which is recognized by the general consent of mankind."

"The Republican Party recognizes the right of the majority to govern, and their power to enforce that right against all attempts at disunion, come from what quarter they may. It is based upon the great fundamental principle upon which the National Government rests, that the Constitution, and all laws made in pursuance thereof, are to be faithfully observed and enforced, and it demands economy and a rigid accountability on the part of all public officers."

"The Republican cause is onward. Every man who desires good government has an important political duty to perform, and, with a united and determined effort, the country will be redeemed from the misrule of modern Democracy."

"Accessions have continually been made to the Republican Party, ever since its organization, it has won to the support of its principles good men, from time to time, from all the other parties, until it now embraces the best men of the country. It has become a compact and overshadowing organization, sufficiently powerful to take possession of and to administer the Government, upon the great principles of liberty, equality, and justice, as embodied in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States."

"The Republican Party was organized in 1854-55, upon the platform of liberty and independence, to maintain the union of the States and the rights of the States; freedom of speech and the press; to resist the spread of slavery and the aggressions of the slave power; the equal rights of all persona to impartial protection at home and abroad, and in the enjoyment of religious freedom; and of all American citizens, whether native or naturalized, to the free exercise of the elective franchise and the enjoyment of its benefits; and requiring no test for office except honesty, capacity, and devotion to American institutions."

"The advanced state of civilized society does not recognize the right of one man to own another man against his will. The inalienable right of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, is conceded to all. The right of every man to himself, to enjoy the fruits of his own ingenuity and industry, are among the natural rights of every person made in the image of God."

"Lt. Gov. and Senate candidate John Fetterman struggled to answer questions during his debate with Mehmet Oz Tuesday night, an observation that is fair to point out"

"If there's a lesson to be taken from Braddock, it's that no community deserves to be abandoned. No community deserves to be left behind. And it can always get better. And in fact there's a moral obligation that it should."

"So a federal government agency convinced a private company to shadow ban a story which turned out to be true and had massive implications on a presidential election. This is borderline fascism and should worry everyone."

"If everyone could maybe please put aside the hate for a bit and pitch in to help, that would be great."

"It was an honor to visit with President Donald Trump. He was friendly, remarkably kind, and incredibly generous with his time."