Charles Schumer quotes

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

#Teacher #Teaching #Thinking

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

#Done #Answers

All we ask for is registration, just like we do for cars.
-- Charles Schumer

#Gun #Gun Control #Car

Inaction is perhaps the greatest mistake of all.
-- Charles Schumer

#Mistake #Inaction

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.
-- Charles Schumer

#Perspective #Vision #Important

Biking through New York's boroughs in 2005, I thought about some old friends, Joe and Eileen Bailey. Though they are imaginary, I frequently talk to them.
-- Charles Schumer

#New York #Old Friends #Biking

You know, my name .... comes from the word shomer, guardian, watcher. My ancestors were guardians of the ghetto wall in Chortkov. And I believe Hashem [Orthodox for God] actually gave me that name. One of my roles, very important in the United States senate, is to be a shomer -- to be a or the shomer Yisrael. And I will continue to be that with every bone in my body ...
-- Charles Schumer

#Wall #Believe #Ghetto

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.
-- Charles Schumer

#Passion #Law #People

I think we could be at a tipping point
-- Charles Schumer

#Gun #Thinking #Tipping

We're here to tell the NRA their nightmare is true...
-- Charles Schumer

#Gun #Gun Control #Nightmare

We're going to hammer guns on the anvil of relentless legislative strategy! We're going to beat guns into submission!
-- Charles Schumer

#Gun #Hammers #Anvils

I'm not sure we will have every single Democrat ... but we want a large number of Republicans to be able to vote for this bill because we think that will encourage the House not only to move forward but to pass a bill.
-- Charles Schumer

#Moving #Thinking #Numbers

I think on this issue more than any other we're going to see sort of a bipartisan longing to get something done, and hopefully you're not going to find the fisticuffs that you would find on lots of other issues. I think you'll be able to glean a sense of progress without us revealing the specifics.
-- Charles Schumer

#Thinking #Issues #Progress

This bill [Immigration Reform and Control act of 1986] is a gamble, a riverboat gamble. There is no guarantee that employer sanctions will work or that amnesty will work. We are headed into uncharted waters.
-- Charles Schumer

#Water #Immigration #Reform

Our borders are much too porous...We want to keep them open, but we also have to be much more careful. ...Right now, if you get on an airplane [to the U.S.] and claim asylum...when you arrive at Kennedy Airport in New York, they will say to you, 'OK, we'll give you a hearing on whether you deserve asylum. Show up in a year.' And two-thirds of the people never show up.
-- Charles Schumer

#New York #Airplane #Airports

Unfortunately, the administration's plan is an ounce of cure for a pound of problems.
-- Charles Schumer

#Immigration #Administration #Pounds

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.
-- Charles Schumer

#Class #People #Care

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

#Political #Way #Holes

Bigotry has always been the poison of America, and we oughta do everything to eradicate it with no excuses or explanations.
-- Charles Schumer

#America #Poison #No Excuses

When Mitt Romney says he wants to reform the tax code, hold onto your wallets.
-- Charles Schumer

#Reform #Want #Wallets

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.
-- Charles Schumer

#Teaching #Opportunity #People

Obviously, there are conservatives who are in the mainstream and conservatives who would take people's rights away.
-- Charles Schumer

#Rights #People #Conservation

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.
-- Charles Schumer

#Mistake #Brave New World #Omission

If other cows with mad cow disease were slaughtered, we wouldn't know where to begin looking for people who might have been affected, .. With a comprehensive tracking system, we would.
-- Charles Schumer

#People #Mad #Disease

Democratic Rep. Charles Schumer of New York made a plea to Livingston, the incoming speaker. These new hearings, these new subpoenas wave a red flag that common sense and common wisdom are not welcome here, .. Mr. Livingston, this may be the first and most important task you will ever face as speaker. Lead us out of this abyss.
-- Charles Schumer

#New York #Common Sense #Important

I am not saying I will vote against John Ashcroft because he is pro-life, .. But let me say if someone was nominated for attorney general who was vehemently pro choice -- who in his or her career spent decades trying to find ways to expand the law abortion at nine months would be perfectly legal -- wouldn't you be more upset and raise more of a voice than against a nominee who was simply pro-choice?.
-- Charles Schumer

#Law #Careers #Voice

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.
-- Charles Schumer

#Needs #Praying #Great Power

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.
-- Charles Schumer

#Warrior #Law #Judging

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.
-- Charles Schumer

#Education #Jobs #Simple

The bottom line is very simple. You negotiate on this, they will up the ante for the debt ceiling.
-- Charles Schumer

#Simple #Ceilings #Debt

We tend to talk, Democrats, as a party, in legislative terms.
-- Charles Schumer

#Party #Democrat #Term

No one believed [the 1986 amnesty for illegal aliens] was tough enough on illegal immigration, and it didn't give enough flexibility on future legal immigration.
-- Charles Schumer

#Giving #Immigration #Amnesty

We've come to a basic agreement, which is that first, people will be legalized. In other words, not citizens, but they'll be allowed to work, come out of the shadows, travel. Then, we will make sure the border is secure. And we have specific metrics that are in the bill. I'm not going to get into what they are...
-- Charles Schumer

#Agreement #People #Shadow

You can set up whatever negotiations or structure you want, but until the Palestinians are willing to accept the fact, as the majority of Israelis do, that there should be two states between the Jordan and the Mediterranean, we won't have peace.
-- Charles Schumer

#Two #Majority #Want

I want to attract the best people into teaching.
-- Charles Schumer

#Teaching #People #Want

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

#Party #Eye #Thinking

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.
-- Charles Schumer

#School #Blow #Israel

Arafat was a barrier to peace.
-- Charles Schumer

#Arafat #Barriers

Anyone who thinks they have a monopoly on truth, and there is only one way to see the world, always gets us into trouble.
-- Charles Schumer

#Thinking #World #Way

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

#America #Together #Consensus

A devastating commentary on the war in Iraq is that we have been unable to spend money on infrastructure.
-- Charles Schumer

#War #Iraq #Infrastructure

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.
-- Charles Schumer

#Party #President #Conservative

When someone takes a private photo, on a private cell phone, it should remain just that: private.
-- Charles Schumer

#Phones #Cells #Cell Phone

I'm strongly for a patient Bill of Rights. Decisions ought to be made by doctors, not accountants.
-- Charles Schumer

#Doctors #Rights #Decision

Democrats don't relate to middle-class people.
-- Charles Schumer

#Class #People #Middle

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.
-- Charles Schumer

#Rivers #Way #Path

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.
-- Charles Schumer

#Dream #Monday #Morning

I went to the public schools myself. And they were great for me.
-- Charles Schumer

#School #Public School

I'd like to see the health care professionals making decisions, not some bureaucrat in Indianapolis working for an insurance company.
-- Charles Schumer

#Decision #Care #Insurance Companies

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.
-- Charles Schumer

#Islands #Reform #Want

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.
-- Charles Schumer

#Matter #Administration #Domes

Republicans always try to paint Democrats as weak on defense. This time, they can't. After all, Mitt Romney's idea of an overseas accomplishment is sending U.S. jobs there.
-- Charles Schumer

#Jobs #Ideas #Accomplishment

Palestinians don't really believe in a state of Israel. They, unlike a majority of Israelis, who have come to the conclusion that they can live with a two-state solution to be determined by the parties, the majority of Palestinians are still very reluctant, and they need to be pushed to get there.
-- Charles Schumer

#Party #Believe #Israel

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.
-- Charles Schumer

#Giving #Trying #President

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.
-- Charles Schumer

#Regret #War #Believe

You do have to change things as warfare changes.
-- Charles Schumer

#Warfare #Things Change

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.
-- Charles Schumer

#Class #People #Needs

So I want my kids to go to public schools because I think it's a better education overall.
-- Charles Schumer

#Education #School #Kids

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

#Honor #Liberty #Essentials

In today's competitive economy, to stand still is to die.
-- Charles Schumer

#Today #Economy #Stills

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

#Soldier #Obsolete #Conventions

I'm totally opposed to vouchers. I will fight them tooth and nail.
-- Charles Schumer

#Fighting #Teeth #Nails

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

#Giving Up #Giving #Serious

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.
-- Charles Schumer

#Balance #Nuclear #Tantrums

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

#Thinking #Wells