Chuck Schumer quotes:

There are two tests in life, more important than any other test. On Monday morning, when you wake up, do you feel in the pit of your stomach you can't wait to go to work? And when you're ready to go home Friday afternoon, do you say, 'I can't wait to go home?'

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

Wall Street excesses helped lead to the Great Recession.

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.

Working with the media remains an effective and essential way to raise issues, educate the public, and prod policy-makers and corporate leaders to change for the better.

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

Reclassification is the best way to for us to preserve the Internet as an unfettered tool for communication and the sharing of ideas.

To do health care was a noble, good thing, and it will help America dramatically. I don't begrudge Barack Obama choosing it, even though if I were president, I might not have.

The Tea Party people are ideologues. They are right, and no one can change their minds. There is no reason for compromise.

The Tea Party elites gained extraordinary influence by being able to funnel millions of undisclosed dollars into campaigns with ads that distort the truth and attack government.

Middle class people, I think they realize that Romney is not for them because of his narrowness, but they want to make sure that Barack Obama is focused on them with things that will make a difference. They know he tried, but they also know that it didn't do as well as they would have liked.

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.

You have to walk in the other guy's moccasins. You have to think what they think. If you want to bring somebody onto your side, you have to figure out what motivates them. What do they need?

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

There are some tax expenditures that are there for very obvious and very important and very good policy reasons. Whether it's the charitable deduction or the deduction for homes, it's not a loophole.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

You do have to change things as warfare changes.

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 went to the public schools myself. And they were great for me.

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.

The Internet in the 21st Century is as important to our future as highways were in the 20th Century. Like a highway, the Internet must remain free and open for all - not determined by the highest bidders.

The bottom line is there are lots of problems that were not created by government. The biggest one is loss of middle class incomes, loss of good-paying jobs which was created by technology and globalization. Above all, when you can move a job to China or India, it reduces wages.

There are very close ties between the Jewish and Mormon people.

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.

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

I want to attract the best people into teaching.

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.

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

Mitt Romney's only bottom line is the one at the end of his own bank statement. The problem is that he confuses his own narrow, self-interest - and that of people like him - with the national interest. He thinks as long as we do right by the Mitt Romneys of the world, America will be just fine.

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

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.

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

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

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.

The fundamental weakness in the Tea Party machine is the stark difference between what the leaders of the Tea Party elite - plutocrats like the Koch Brothers -want and what the average grassroots Tea Party follower wants.

The Tea Party is a rear guard, not a vanguard.

The vast majority of the people employed by Wall Street are the secretary who goes in to work on the Long Island Rail Road, who makes fifty, sixty, seventy thousand dollars a year.

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

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

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

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.

To introduce a whole new tax regime, that would be modern tax reform. But that's too big a task.

What the public hates the most is when they think the politicians aren't listening to them. They understand that we can't solve all their problems with a snap of our fingers, but they sure want us to try because we are public servants.

My father, Abe, was a small businessman. For 32 years, he ran an exterminating company. That may explain why our family always associated the smell of roach spray with love.

I think it's a little insulting, a bit insulting to American workers when Rand Paul says that unemployment insurance is a disservice.

Arafat was a barrier to peace.

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.

Economic conservatives like immigration reform, and in fact, many of them supported the bill that John McCain and I put together in the Senate.

Mitt Romney would move the Court even further right, putting landmark decisions like Roe v. Wade at risk. Some say Romney would repeat the past. I disagree - he'd be worse.

The way to lessen the grip of the Tea Party on the electoral process would be to do what a handful have done and have a primary where all voters, members of every party, can vote, and the top two vote-getters then enter a runoff.

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.

When Republicans say, 'The first thing you do when you do deficit reduction is reduce rates,' it would be like Democrats saying, 'The first thing you do when you do deficit reduction is provide free Medicare at age 55.' We'd like to do that! But it won't bring the deficit down. That's for sure.

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.

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 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.

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.

Democrats don't relate to middle-class people.

We certainly want those at the top to do well, but if you base your entire presidency and your entire economic platform on helping them do even better, you're missing what makes the economy tick. Because not everyone has been as fortunate as Mitt Romney, you cannot base your whole approach on a life experience as rarified as his.

The 2014 election was not a repudiation of government in general.

Every administration has this idea to talk tough to Israel and make nice to the Arabs and the Palestinians, and that's the way to bring about peace. It's counter-productive - it's actually the opposite.