Cory Booker

More than anything, we must do better for our children's education. ”

My parents were obsessed with my education. ”

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

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. ”

The richness of America is that we are diverse. We're not Sweden. We're not Norway. We are a great American experiment. And as soon as we start trying to forget race or turn our back on race, number one, we don't confront the real racial realities that still persist. ”

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. ”

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. ”

I think there's a lot of folks who believe that this is a time that Democrats have to fight fire with fire. As a guy who ran a fire department, that's not a really good strategy. ”

My story starts with my dad, a black boy born to a single mother in a small town in North Carolina. It starts with my parents meeting in Washington, D.C., in the '60s, at a time of incredible activism. ”

So many great movements didn't succeed the first time, but people kept trying and trying and trying. ”