Cory Booker

Life's too short not to try different things and to see what works for you and your body.

— Cory Booker

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.

— Cory Booker

We need a president that can heal, that can bring people together, that can get us back. We have so much common pain in this country that can get us back to a sense of common purpose and common cause.

— Cory Booker

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.

— Cory Booker

Americans are losing faith in this country's ability to work for them.

— Cory Booker

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.

— Cory Booker

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.

— Cory Booker

I want to try to live my own values as consciously and purposefully as I can.

— Cory Booker

Deterrents properly placed can help. But that is not enough. We are one society, and as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said, what we will have to repent for is not the “vitriolic words and violent actions of the bad people,” but the “appalling silence and indifference of the good people.

— Cory Booker

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.

— Cory Booker

Everybody wants to find their soul mate, and I'm no different. That's definitely what I want in the future.

— Cory Booker

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.

— Cory Booker

I was born after the Civil Rights Movement. I never saw Martin Luther King alive.

— Cory Booker

Being vegan for me is a cleaner way of not participating in practices that don't align with my values.

— Cory Booker

It takes too much energy to hate.

— Cory Booker

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.

— Cory Booker

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.

— Cory Booker

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

— Cory Booker

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.

— Cory Booker

In America we have a Declaration of Independence, but our history, our advancements, our global strength all point to an American declaration of interdependence.

— Cory Booker

To me, feminism is believing in women's equality, and I ardently ascribe to that belief.

— Cory Booker

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.

— Cory Booker

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.

— Cory Booker

Marriage equality is not a choice. It is a legal right.

— Cory Booker

Americans, at our best, stand up to bullies and fight those who seek to demean and degrade others.

— Cory Booker

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.

— Cory Booker

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

— Cory Booker

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

— Cory Booker

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

— Cory Booker

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?

— Cory Booker

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].

— Cory Booker

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.

— Cory Booker

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

— Cory Booker

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.

— Cory Booker

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?

— Cory Booker

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.

— Cory Booker

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.

— Cory Booker

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.

— Cory Booker

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

— Cory Booker

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

— Cory Booker

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.

— Cory Booker

Marriage equality is not a choice. It is a legal right.

— Cory Booker

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.

— Cory Booker

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

— Cory Booker

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.

— Cory Booker

Small acts of decency ripple in ways we could never imagine.

— Cory Booker

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.

— Cory Booker

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.

— Cory Booker

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.

— Cory Booker

You were not built for comfort and convenience. You were built to overcome.

— Cory Booker

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.

— Cory Booker

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.

— Cory Booker

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.

— Cory Booker

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.

— Cory Booker

It's not hard to imagine Donald Trump leading us into a war just because somebody got under his very thin skin.

— Cory Booker

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.

— Cory Booker

Newark faces real challenges.

— Cory Booker

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.

— Cory Booker

I'm very concerned about U.S. food policy.

— Cory Booker

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.

— Cory Booker

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.

— Cory Booker

Marriage equality is not a choice. It is a legal right.

— Cory Booker

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.

— Cory Booker

I wrote down the grades I wanted in every class.

— Cory Booker

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.

— Cory Booker

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

— Cory Booker

My weakness in life is two men who seduce me all the time - named Ben & Jerry.

— Cory Booker

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.

— Cory Booker

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.

— Cory Booker

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.

— Cory Booker

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.

— Cory Booker

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.

— Cory Booker

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.

— Cory Booker

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.

— Cory Booker

Hopelessness is a really toxic and dangerous state.

— Cory Booker

Americans, at our best, stand up to bullies and fight those who seek to demean and degrade others.

— Cory Booker

If we want a great nation, we have to change it ourselves.

— Cory Booker

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.

— Cory Booker

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.'

— Cory Booker

Let's not judge. Let's draw inspiration from each other's stories - successes and failures - and realize we're all connected.

— Cory Booker

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.

— Cory Booker

You are more beautiful than you realize, stronger than you know, more powerful than you could imagine.

— Cory Booker

You can't have a physical transformation until you have a spiritual transformation.

— Cory Booker

We must be agents of love.

— Cory Booker

I live in Newark. My family lives in Newark. I own a house in Newark.

— Cory Booker

In America we have a Declaration of Independence, but our history, our advancements, our global strength all point to an American declaration of interdependence.

— Cory Booker

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.

— Cory Booker

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.

— Cory Booker

In life, you get one choice over and over again. That is to take conditions as they are or take responsibility for changing them.

— Cory Booker