Chuck Schumer

“If we say the Geneva Convention is obsolete, then what do others who have our soldiers say?”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“We tend to talk, Democrats, as a party, in legislative terms.”

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

“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.”

“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.”

“The Tea Party elites believe government is evil. Everything about government is bad, and they blame all problems, even non-economic problems, problems that were caused by the private sector, on government.”

“Wall Street excesses helped lead to the Great Recession.”

“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.”

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

“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.”

“Arafat was a barrier to peace.”

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

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

“Any party that writes off 25, 30, 35 percent of the American people is not going to be a winner.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”