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Cory Booker [1969-0] American

Rank: 101
Politician, United States Senator

Cory Anthony Booker is an American politician and the junior United States Senator from New Jersey, in office since 2013. Previously he served as mayor of Newark from 2006 to 2013.

Patriotism, Health, History, Independence, Anger, Attitude, Change, Education, Equality, Failure, Finance, Friendship, Future, Good, Great, Legal, Love, Marriage, Religion, Respect, Strength, War

Quote	Tags	Rank
If you look at great human civilizations, from the Roman Empire to the Soviet Union, you will see that most do not fail simply due to external threats but because of internal weakness, corruption, or a failure to manifest the values and ideals they espouse.	Failure, Great	101
Patriotism is love of country. But you can't love your country without loving your countrymen and countrywomen. We don't always have to agree, but we must empower each other, we must find the common ground, we must build bridges across our differences to pursue the common good.	Good, Love, Patriotism	102
This is our history - from the Transcontinental Railroad to the Hoover Dam, to the dredging of our ports and building of our most historic bridges - our American ancestors prioritized growth and investment in our nation's infrastructure.	History	103
No matter who you are, no matter what your color, creed, how you choose to pray or who you choose to love, that if you are an American - first generation or fifth - one who is willing to work hard, play by the rules and apply your God-given talents - that you should be able to find a job that pays the bills.		104
You can't have a physical transformation until you have a spiritual transformation.		105
I'm going to have setbacks and failures; I'm not going to see change right away all of the time or most of the time. But everybody I've ever respected has failed at one thing or another. I've definitely fallen on my face. But I've also had a comparatively easy life.	Change	106
In America we have a Declaration of Independence, but our history, our advancements, our global strength all point to an American declaration of interdependence.	History, Independence, Strength	107
If we cannot provide excellent educational opportunities to all children, safe communities, quality health coverage, or robust and fair avenues towards wealth creation, then our nation will increasingly be in peril.	Health	108
You have to understand the Newark Riots - a lot of people understand that the pain was the initial explosion of anger and alienation, but after that, the response, sending the National Guard troops - a lot of violence was carried out and perpetrated by those who were allegedly coming here to protect residents.	Anger	109
These are the themes in life which are consistent in Judaism, Islam, Hinduism - of being grounded in who you are and being engaged in an unjust world.		110
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.		111
Everybody wants to find their soul mate, and I'm no different. That's definitely what I want in the future.	Future	112
I don't want to be a race-transcending leader. I want to be deeply understood as a man, as African- American, as a Christian, all that I am.		113
Our platform is crafted by Democrats but it is not about partisanship, its about pragmatism.		114
We choose forward. We choose inclusion. We choose growing together. We choose American economic might and muscle, standing strong on the bedrock of the American ideal: a strong, empowered and ever-growing middle class.		115
When your country is in a costly war, with our soldiers sacrificing abroad and our nation facing a debt crisis at home, being asked to pay your fair share isn't class warfare - it's patriotism.	Patriotism, War	116
I don't know what God has planned for me or you or anyone, but I do know that in darkness, you discover an indistinguishable light.		117
You should be able to afford health care for your family. You should be able to retire with dignity and respect. And you should be able to give your children the kind of education that allows them to dream even bigger, go even farther and accomplish even more than you could ever imagine.	Education, Health, Respect	118
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.		119
We need to look at the totality of the things that we're labeling as violent and really examine whether we need to have some more proportionality in terms of the punishment fitting the crime that's done. The bright line that we have right now, between violent and nonviolent, does not account for shades of gray.		120
I know Donald Trump. I've met him; I know his family. I have love and friendship and affection for his family members. But I'm going to work very hard to ensure that he is not our president.	Friendship	121
Stay faithful in things large and taking on the world, but stay faithful in those things small - because remember it's the small things, the size of a mustard seed, that ultimately moves mountains.		122
Marriage equality is not a choice. It is a legal right.	Equality, Legal, Marriage	123
This November, with the re-election of President Barack Obama, this generation of Americans will ever expand upon the hope, the truth and the promise of America.		124
I'm a person that's grounded in faith and believe that my core values, motivation, inspiration, draw from a conception of the world in that way.		125
My simple point is that I judge a person's faith by how they live their life, not by the tenets of their religion. I've watched the holiest of people walk past somebody in need or treat their staff mean. To me, the beauty of faith is only seen when people live it consistently or struggle to do so.	Religion	126
One of the very hallmarks of our nation is the ideal of E Pluribus Unum. It is a concept that richly flows from the highest ideals of our nation.		201
We become distracted from productive labors by our perceived opponents; we become focused on them and not on our larger calling to advance our nation; our debate becomes more about scoring points against an adversary and less about advancing our common cause.		202
After Yale Law School, I was proud to try to live up to my parents' example and began my career working for The Urban Justice Center in the streets of Newark, organizing residents to fight for better housing conditions.		203
May we all, as a nation of believers, fight for the achievement of America; may we make sacrifices worthy of those proud men and women who fought for us, labored for us, bled soil from the beaches of Normandy to the fields of Gettysburg for us.		204
I am happy that the urgency to reform our broken criminal justice system has found allies all across the political spectrum.		205
I debated between law school and divinity.		206
Our nation was not founded because we all looked alike, or prayed alike, or descended from the same family tree. But our founders, in their genius, in this, the oldest constitutional democracy, put forth on this earth the idea that all are created equal; that we all have inalienable rights.		207
We have Donald Trump standing up as one of the greatest fear-mongers in this nation's history. He's trying to make us afraid of each other.		208
Our platform calls for a balanced deficit reduction plan where the wealthy pay their fair share. And when your country is in a costly war, with our soldiers sacrificing abroad and our nation facing a debt crisis at home, being asked to pay your fair share isn't class warfare - it's patriotism.	Patriotism	209
When I was just a twenty-something, I came to Newark, and I found a connection to the city in a spiritual way. I found a connection here and people here that reminded me so much of my roots and my own family.		210
I want to be myself. I want to be as authentic as possible.		211
In college, I was a fiercely committed Democrat - a meeting with Jack Kemp, then Secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development, challenged my blind partisanship.		212
Cities can be places that represent the best of our ideals: where Americans of all different backgrounds can come together and, through their interactions, and even through their unity, spawn true American greatness.		213
We also must pull from our highest ideals of justice and protect against those ills that destabilized our economy - like predatory lending, over-leveraged financial institutions and the unchecked avarice of the past that trumped fairness and common sense. Our platform calls for significant cuts in federal spending.		214
Our platform emphasizes that a vibrant, free and fair market is essential to economic growth.		215
People are always trying to draw simplistic dialectics that can capture things.		216
I just know that I'm innovative. I'm a quick thinker... In Washington, I just want to be a senator who finds a way to drive change and not figure out a way to conform.		217
I am a geek nerd who happened to have a temporary period of jockiness.		218
I'd gladly take a grenade, if it meant saving Newark.		219
I was born after the Civil Rights Movement. I never saw Martin Luther King alive.		220
The richness of America is that we are diverse. We're not Sweden. We're not Norway. We are a great American experiment. And as soon as we start trying to forget race or turn our back on race, number one, we don't confront the real racial realities that still persist.		221
The joke I always make is I'm either running for reelection, running for Senate, running for governor, or running for my life. The latter is also a viable possibility.		222
I don't know what the strategy will be in Washington. The reality is, is, I have got to go down there, as my mentor, as people like Bill Bradley have told me to do, get to know your colleagues on both sides of the aisle, recognize that they, too, beat with the same heart and the same type of blood.		223
I was raised in a very religious home with two parents who were deeply involved in the black church. When I was young, I went to a small black AME church in New Jersey.		224
As a government leader, I'm not going to sit on the sidelines and watch all these other sectors innovate. I'm going to do everything I can as a leader to be in that innovation, to be a provocateur for that innovation.		225
My father passed away a few days before my election. This man, an African American born to a poor single mother in 1936 in the South, would worry in the last years of his life that he had better life chances when he was growing up than a young man born in the same circumstances would have today.		226
I'm intending to work on juvenile justice reform, sentencing reform, reentry, drug treatment, access to mental health care.		301
We have had in our nation a well-celebrated Declaration of Independence. But our success as a country will depend upon a new 'Declaration of Inter-dependence.' A belief in how much we need each other, how much we share one common destiny.	Independence	302
When American citizens pull together, there is little we can't accomplish.		303
Cities can become the engines that fuel our nation's growth and prosperity, and they can be wide gateways for families to achieve their own American dream of prosperity.		304
I learned about community organizing from my parents. As a child, their stories were so instructive.		305
As I review the great history of our nation, community organizers have been at the center of so many of our great social movements.		306
Are there any monuments built to demagogues? I just don't think so.		307
There was a small point in my life in law school, right before I moved to Newark, when I didn't know what I wanted to do, and I felt so lost.		308
I come from a mother who can cry at a G.E. commercial.		309
Our nation was founded with a bunch of founding legislators who joined together to move our country out of the blocks and get us started, and every generation since then has found a way to advance the ball down the field.		310
My dad set a clear model for me for what manhood was all about.		311
The change we seek for our nation is not the choice of an individual but must be the calling of a country.		312
I live in Brick Towers, a public housing project in Newark's Central Ward. I moved in when the projects were privately owned by a man who the residents and I believed was a grade A slumlord.		313
Generations of heroic Americans have made America more inclusive, more expansive, and more just.		314
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. This is the high call of patriotism.	Patriotism	315
Tolerance says I am just going to stomach your right to be different. That if you disappear from the face of the earth, I am no better or worse off. But love - love knows that every American has worth and value, no matter what their background, race, religion, or sexual orientation.		316
America has seen enough of a handful of people growing rich at the cost of our nation descending into economic crisis.		317
Americans, at our best, stand up to bullies and fight those who seek to demean and degrade others.		318
We have a presidential nominee in Hillary Clinton who knows that, in a time of stunningly wide disparities of wealth in our nation, America's greatness must not be measured by how many millionaires and billionaires we have, but by how few people we have living in poverty.		319
Let us declare that we are a nation of interdependence, and that in America love always trumps hate. Let us declare, so that generations yet unborn can hear us. We are the United States of America; our best days are ahead of us. And together, with Hillary Clinton as our President, America, we will rise.		320
Listen, don't get my Jersey pride going. We are the most densely-populated state in America 'cause some many people who know the secret want to live there.		321
In America, our differences matter, but our country matters more. That's the attitude I wanted to take to the Senate.	Attitude	322
What most Americans don't realize is a lot of the challenges we're struggling with today are the result of conscious housing policies.		323
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.		324
We are all innovators, we all like to use our imagination, which is our greatest tool.		325
'Hamilton' is one of the best things I've ever seen on a stage, and for a guy who loves American history, hip-hop and theater, it was pure bliss.		326
The process of writing a book has given me a whole new reverence for writers. Mechanically, it is a brutal process; emotionally, it's incredibly healing.		401
I think Newark has been in the crosshairs in every generation of the fight to achieve America. And I think Newark is a city that's at that crossroads still.		402
We're all tired of a Washington that has these partisan camps where nothing gets done.		403
I have never articulated a specific number, but I think a nation as great as we are, that professes to favor freedom and liberty, that we would find a way to evidence that in our criminal justice system by achieving what we know we can achieve: a reduction in crime, a reduction in taxpayer expense, and a reduction in the prison population.		404
We live in a nation where, when New Jersey figures out how to do something and does it well, and shows progress, it affects other states.		405
Small acts of decency ripple in ways we could never imagine.		406
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.		407
Let's not judge. Let's draw inspiration from each other's stories - successes and failures - and realize we're all connected.		408
When they told me I couldn't sit on the Senate floor with an iPad - that the technology wasn't even permitted - I breathed deep and knew that I was going to have to start pushing.		409
Every sector of society looks at digital analytics in a productive way. Limiting my ability to use them is just unacceptable. And by the way, Congress conducts polls using traditional methods. No one is using social media analytics as a substitute for that.		410
When we embraced social media, we took more control of the Newark narrative. We increased responsiveness toward residents. We drew more of our constituents in to participate in government and improve our cities.		411
Innovators reimagine our world in so many areas. We need them to help reimagine what government can and should be.		412
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.		413
As a vegetarian eating a plateful of eggs, I found myself in this weird place where I didn't want to think about where those eggs came from. I didn't want to think about the treatment of the animals who produced those eggs. When I find myself trying not to think about things, it seems to me that I'm practicing avoidance.		414
Life's too short not to try different things and to see what works for you and your body.		415
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. And that's what I'm trying to do.		416
I thought that Donald Trump's ascendancy would end when he attacked John McCain, saying he's not a war hero. I found that shocking, for him to say that.		417
I've been wrong on everything about Trump; I've been wrong about everything on the Republican side of the ledger. But allow me - with that caveat - to made the prediction that Donald Trump will not be the president of the United States. It just will not happen.		418
When I go about my own politics, I meet Tea Party supporters who I can work with in Congress, that I find common ground with. I find Tea Party supporters who won't let me get a sentence out without judging me. To say that there is a 'Tea Party supporter' is a gross generality.		419
The issues we hear Donald Trump talking about are just so contrary to who we are as a people. They are an affront and an insult to our higher angels and our best selves.		420
Elections have consequences. So many people want to complain, but they don't want to vote. We can talk about Hillary Clinton. We can celebrate her; we can support her, but if we don't come out and vote for her, for shame.		421
We must be agents of love.		422
It's not hard to imagine Donald Trump leading us into a war just because somebody got under his very thin skin.		423
We're not called to be a tolerant nation. We're called to be a nation of love.		424
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.		425
Don't give in to cynicism. It is a toxic spiritual state.		426
You've got to be one that, wherever you are, like a flower, you've got to blossom where you're planted. You cannot eliminate darkness. You cannot banish it by cursing darkness. The only way to get rid of darkness is light and to be the light yourself.		501
It defies logic that protections against predatory debt collection practices don't apply to debt collectors hired by the federal government.		502
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.'		503
If we invest in ourselves, the collective good, we all thrive.		504
The greatest natural resource our country has is not oil. It's not gas. It's not coal. It's the genius of our children.		505
You can be like a thermometer, just reflecting the world around you. Or you can be a thermostat, one of those people who sets the temperature.		506
You don't have to be one of those people that accepts things as they are. Every day, take responsibility for changing them right where you are.		507
Democracy is not a spectator sport. It is a difficult, hard, full-contact, participatory endeavor.		508
People who get comfortable in their spirit miss what they were created for. They were created to magnify the glory of the world.		509
I have seen things in my life that have broken me in spirit.		510
In life, you get one choice over and over again. That is to take conditions as they are or take responsibility for changing them.		511
I believe that living life with a definiteness of purpose, with having a central focus, is essential to success.		512
Stand in a way that you are always empowering people to join in, because the only way to be truly successful is not to succeed as an individual, but to succeed as a part of a community, of a country.		513
You are more beautiful than you realize, stronger than you know, more powerful than you could imagine.		514
This world has a way of trying to homogenize you. Trying to sanitize you. Trying to scrub you of your unique divine genius. This world wants to make you regular.		515
You were not built for comfort and convenience. You were built to overcome.		516
Life is about, every single day, getting up to manifest your truth.		517
It's incredibly flattering to be a U.S. senator, which I want to stay at for a long time.		518
My grandmother from Iowa, she is dancing in Heaven at the prospect that the next president of the United States is going to be Hillary Rodham Clinton.		519
Do not forget from whence you've come.		520
My family is no different from yours. We may be different from the geography that we come from. Some of you all may pray differently than I do, some of you all may be from a different ethnicity, but we all have the same story.		521
Equal protection under the law - for race, religion, gender or sexual orientation - should not be subject to the most popular sentiments of the day.		522
As a guy that had been told to drop out many times as I was coming up, I don't think you should tell any candidate about what they should do and what decisions they should make.		523
My weakness in life is two men who seduce me all the time - named Ben & Jerry.		524
If you grew up where I grew up, you would experience a very different criminal justice system than Camden, New Jersey.		525
Minorities do not believe this country will give them a fair shake.		526
Hopelessness is a really toxic and dangerous state.		601
I love mayors.		602
In Newark, we see a problem and want to seize it, but we run up against the wall of state government, the wall of federal government that does not have the flexibility or doesn't see problems, even. At the federal level, it's often a zero-sum game: If you win, I lose. At the local level, it's just not local that. It's win-win-win.		603
We should be ashamed of ourselves. We inherited the best infrastructure on the globe from our grandparents... and we've taken that inheritance and squandered it.		604
If we want a great nation, we have to change it ourselves.		605
The mayoral mentality is incredibly valuable. I don't want to lose that.		606
More than anything, we must do better for our children's education.		607
We know that there will never be a great Newark unless there is a great public school system for our city.		608
The fact that Newark is having poetry festivals and peace conferences - all of these things are building an undeniable thesis that our city is making incredible strides forward.		609
We're heading towards a perception tipping point where it's going to soon become a foregone conclusion that not only has Newark turned a corner, but it's way down the right road.		610
Athletes are still exploited. If they blow out their knee, if they somehow don't meet the mandates of a coach, they lose their scholarship. They don't get their degree.		611
We're a nation of hope, of high ideals.		612
We've got to be entrepreneurial; we've got to be innovative, and we've got to figure out ways of getting things done that people might think are very unorthodox.		613
Kids born into certain ZIP codes will most likely have certain educational outcomes. And we've got to end that. If we end that, we explode economic development.		614
I'm very knowledgeable of the challenges before me.		615
My whole life has been about confronting cynicism.		616
I spent eight years living without heat and hot water.		617
I have not settled down with a life partner.		618
So many great movements didn't succeed the first time, but people kept trying and trying and trying.		619
The beauty of having your ego checked as many times as my ego was checked in Newark made me recognize how much I needed other people who were very different than me in order to get big things done.		620
If we are going to do big things in our country, we're going to have to think about better ways working across our differences.		621
What happens once you get a felony conviction? Now you are entering this American caste system where you can't get a job, you can't get a loan, you can't get a Pell grant, you can't get public housing.		622
The drug war has been a war where the direct casualties have primarily been America's poor; America's minorities; and often, unfortunately, America's vulnerable, in terms of people with disease and addiction and mental health.		623
My story starts with my dad, a black boy born to a single mother in a small town in North Carolina. It starts with my parents meeting in Washington, D.C., in the '60s, at a time of incredible activism.		624
I wrote down the grades I wanted in every class.		625
My parents were obsessed with my education.		626
My father was not going to let me sit back and just consume my blessings. He wanted me to contribute, and to do that, you have to be mission-oriented.		701
Newark faces real challenges.		702
I was born after the Civil Rights Movement.		703
The majority of our criminals that we lock up are non-violent offenders.		704
I love seeing on Twitter when someone says I'm gay, and I say, 'So what does it matter if I am? So be it. I hope you are not voting for me because you are making the presumption that I'm straight.'		705
I am a Yale Law School graduate.		706
I have got the job of my dreams.		707
I live in Newark. My family lives in Newark. I own a house in Newark.		708
Patriotism is a love of country. If you love your country, you should love your countrymen and women. It doesn't mean you always agree with them or even like them. It is understanding that we have interwoven destiny.	Patriotism	709
If I just retweet the nice things, it rings hollow after a while.		710
When people jump on your mistakes, don't hide from them; let people know that you're human, too.		711
Government has got to open up and engage citizenry as partners.		712
The disgust and latent hostility I felt toward gays were subcategories of hatred, plain and simple.		713
It takes too much energy to hate.		714
The gay people with whom I am close are some of the strongest, most passionate and caring people I know, and their demands for justice are no less imperative than those of any other community.		715
I have seen too many of my male friends - no matter whether they're on the football field or inside a church - bash gays and then revel in their machismo or piety.		716
The Constitution makes very clear what the obligation of the United States Senate is and what the obligation of the president of the United States is. To allow a Supreme Court position to remain vacant for well over a year cuts against what I think the intentions of the framers are and what the traditions of the Senate and the executive are.		717
I believe there's tremendous value in having a Supreme Court with a diverse set of experiences - especially when we're dealing with issues that range from our intimate relationships to how we finance campaigns.	Finance	718
Having people that really reflect the spectrum of American experiences is important to have on the Supreme Court.		719
When I do my hiring in the United States Senate, I look at issues of diversity.		720
I want to try to live my own values as consciously and purposefully as I can.		721
Being vegan for me is a cleaner way of not participating in practices that don't align with my values.		722
I'm very concerned about U.S. food policy.		723
If we're concerned about climate change as a country, we should have policies that make sure our great-grandchildren have a planet that's healthy and strong.		724
Food is at the core of our lives in ways we don't always think about - how it affects our environment, how it affects our health and well-being, how it affects the expense of society, the expense of government.		725

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