Quotes by Charles Schumer

• I'm strongly for a patient Bill of Rights. Decisions ought to be made by doctors, not accountants.
• I'd like to see the health care professionals making decisions, not some bureaucrat in Indianapolis working for an insurance company.
• I went to the public schools myself. And they were great for me.
• I want to attract the best people into teaching.
• I think teaching should be an exalted profession, not a picked-on profession.
• I respect people who feel things passionately. I do. But when someone is a judge, that is not what they should bring to the bench. It is not really passion, except in rare instances, that serves the bench well. It is, rather, an ability to understand the law and follow it.
• I made education the highest priority of my campaign - actually education and jobs - and the reason is a simple one: I think the future of America depends on it.
• I believe the war on terror is the vital discussion of this decade and of our generation, probably. To win the war on terror, you need a good offense and a good defense. On defense, I regret to say, basically, this administration has not come close to doing what is necessary.
• America is a place where we all come together. It is a place of consensus.
• A devastating commentary on the war in Iraq is that we have been unable to spend money on infrastructure.
• Do not let arguments of expediency persuade you. That is the slow road to oblivion. That is the tortured path to undoing step by step, bit by bit, as the river creates a canyon, the way of life that we love.
• Democrats don't relate to middle-class people.
• But I don't think the Democratic Party is at eye level with the middle class.
• We are on the precipice of a crisis, a Constitutional crisis. The checks and balances, which have been at the core of this Republic, are about to be evaporated by the nuclear option. The checks and balances that say if you get 51% of the vote, you don't get your way 100% of the time. It is amazing, it's almost a temper tantrum.
• Arafat was a barrier to peace.
• Anyone who thinks they have a monopoly on truth, and there is only one way to see the world, always gets us into trouble.
• I'm totally opposed to vouchers. I will fight them tooth and nail.
• Giving up even an ounce of precious freedom is a very serious thing to do.
• Voters did say 'repeal health care,' they did say 'reduce the size of government.' But not a single one of them from the tea party or anywhere said 'give tax breaks to the wealthiest.'
• As long as the Palestinians send terrorists onto school buses and to nightclubs to blow up people, Israel has no choice but to build the fence.
• Well, I think it's too early to call Fallujah a failure.
• Well, the tough thing for them is that the Republican primary is pretty far over to the right, just as the Democratic primary is further over to the left than the average voter in each party.
• Whether you are a Democrat or Republican, whether you are a liberal or a conservative, we know that neither this President nor prior Presidents of both parties did everything right or we would not have had a 9/11.
• You know, we have three branches of government. We have a House. We have a Senate. We have a President.
• You do have to change things as warfare changes.
• Soft money will find its way and seep into the political system and corrode it, unless we plug every hole.
• We need to make sure middle-class people are able to pay the bills. We need to make sure that poor people don't starve. Those are values, too.
• Ideological warriors whether from the Left or the Right are bad news for the bench. They tend to make law, not interpret law. And that's not what any of us should want from our judges.
• So I want my kids to go to public schools because I think it's a better education overall.
• Let me say this, to all of the chattering class that so much focuses on those little tiny, yes, porky amendments - the American people really don't care.
• It is essential that all Americans take the time to honor and remember those individuals who gave their lives in defense of our liberty.
• Inaction is perhaps the greatest mistake of all.
• In today's competitive economy, to stand still is to die.
• In a brave new world, a post-September 11 world, anyone is going to make certain mistakes. The mistakes that have been made on homeland security, on protecting our Nation from another terrorist attack, are mistakes of omission. We are simply not doing enough.
• If we say the Geneva Convention is obsolete, then what do others who have our soldiers say?
• If we are going to stay a great power and I hope and pray we will we need the truth. We need to know what is going right and we need to know what is going wrong. There is no greater time than now.
• We tend to talk, Democrats, as a party, in legislative terms.
• When one has success, the answer is not to undo that success. It is to continue what has been done.
• But these days there are a lot of younger people who would like to go into teaching but don't because the economic opportunities are sometimes elsewhere.