Quotes By Charles Schumer

On foreign policy, President Obama has kept our nation safe from terrorism and restored our standing in the world. When it comes to one of our closest allies - Israel - President Obama has been resolute.

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.

If we say the Geneva Convention is obsolete, then what do others who have our soldiers say?

Well, I think it's too early to call Fallujah a failure.

When Mitt Romney says he wants to reform the tax code, hold on to your wallets. We know Mitt Romney never met a tax haven he didn't like. But his new favorite tax haven is actually not the Cayman Islands - its Paul Ryan's budget.

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.

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.

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.

You know, we have three branches of government. We have a House. We have a Senate. We have a President.

I want to attract the best people into teaching.

You do have to change things as warfare changes.

It is essential that all Americans take the time to honor and remember those individuals who gave their lives in defense of our liberty.

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.

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.

America is a place where we all come together. It is a place of consensus.

Soft money will find its way and seep into the political system and corrode it, unless we plug every hole.

There are many reasons why Mitt Romney should not become president, but perhaps the most important of all is the narrowness of his experience, perspective and vision.

Today, families like the one I grew up in still believe in that American dream. But as President Obama says, it's a make-or-break moment for the middle class. Mitt Romney's plans would make things worse.

The dome of the U.S. Capitol has fallen into severe disrepair... As the Chairman of the Senate Committee on Rules and Administration, which oversees matters of the Capitol's physical plant, I have serious concerns about the consequences of omitting this funding from the stopgap spending measure.

But I don't think the Democratic Party is at eye level with the middle class.

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.

I told the President, I told Rahm Emanuel and others in the administration that I thought the policy they took to try to bring about negotiations is counter-productive, because when you give the Palestinians hope that the United States will do its negotiating for them, they are not going to sit down and talk.

When one has success, the answer is not to undo that success. It is to continue what has been done.

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.

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.'

I think teaching should be an exalted profession, not a picked-on profession.

Barack Obama knows that to create an economy built to last, we need to focus on middle-class families. Families who stay up on Sunday nights pacing the floor, like my dad did, while their children, tucked in bed, dream big dreams. Families who aren't sure what Monday morning will bring, but who believe our nation's best days are still ahead.

Giving up even an ounce of precious freedom is a very serious thing to do.

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.

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.