Cory Booker

Democracy is not a spectator sport. It is a difficult, hard, full-contact, participatory endeavor.

My generation of Americans, the scions of daring dreamers, the children of the fearlessly faithful and the offspring of many of history's most audacious actors - we, together, drink deeply from wells of freedom, liberty and opportunity that we did not dig.

What we need to do is understand that we have to love each other, that we have to see each other have worth and dignity and value.

Equal protection under the law - for race, religion, gender or sexual orientation - should not be subject to the most popular sentiments of the day.

I think patriotism, by its very definition, is love of country. But we seem to have become a country where the highest thing we're reaching for is tolerance.

No matter what, we always have the power to choose hope over despair, engagement over apathy, kindness over indifference, enthusiasm over lethargy, love over hate. This is our true freedom. Whatever life may throw at us, we have the freedom and ability to choose our attitude. And I believe it is in those moments of choice that we manifest our destiny.

These false barriers that we've erected of space and race, all these illusions that we've allowed to infect us like toxins, we've got to rid ourselves of that. We are a better nation when we are ultimately united in a common purpose and a common cause.

We know that there will never be a great Newark unless there is a great public school system for our city.

Cynicism cripples our imagination and limits our ability to see faint possibilities amidst glaring problems.

When people jump on your mistakes, don't hide from them; let people know that you're human, too.

I live in a working-class community that is struggling at the poverty line, where people who work full-time jobs still at my corner bodega use food stamps. Do you think they care what the stock market's doing today or what the GDP number is? No.

I'm bothered when people don't understand that they have an obligation to use their best measure of devotion, of resources, to sacrifice for the common good.

Real courage is holding on to a still voice in your head that says, 'I must keep going.' It's that voice that says nothing is a failure if it is not final. That voice that says to you, 'Get out of bed. Keep going. I will not quit.'

I'm hopeful that at the end of my life, someone like Frederick Douglass would look at my life and say, 'Well done: you've proven yourself to be worthy of the legacy we left you.'

Never let your soul be silenced. Live life out loud. Every day tell your truth not with words but with actions from your heart.

We're not called to be a tolerant nation. We're called to be a nation of love.

I reject the idea that the guy who comes out of Yale and goes to work in the projects in Newark is good, and the guy who goes to work for a white-shoe law firm is bad. We're all mountain rangers. We all have peaks and valleys.

I've taken on impossible fights before and won and I've done it not by taking on the tactics and techniques of demagogues and bullies but by calling people to our higher angels, calling to the moral imagination of communities about what we can be and what we can achieve together.

There is too much disagreement for disagreement's sake. In a time of persistent challenges that still call into question our most sacred aspirations as a country, we cannot afford shallow callous divisiveness in our public debate.

I'm intending to work on juvenile justice reform, sentencing reform, reentry, drug treatment, access to mental health care.

While most men don't have first-hand experience with gender-based discrimination, we can still be powerful allies for advancing women's rights. We need to do a better job of listening to women and standing up for what's right, even when it's not popular or comfortable.