Cory Booker quotes - page 2

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)
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. View quote
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. View quote
Cory Booker
We prove worthy of the privileges that we have not by paying anything back, but by paying it forward. View quote
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. View quote
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? View quote
Cory Booker
We are brick city. We are like bricks themselves. We are strong. We are resilient. We are enduring. View quote
Cory Booker
What would you do if you could not fail. Answer that question and do that. View quote
Cory Booker
Immediately I knew that was problematic [being paired on a television show with John Lewis]. Because the show starts with our bios, and it starts with, ‘John Lewis, hero of the civil rights movement stood on the Edmund Pettus Bridge. ... He literally bled the southern soil red. And then it goes to me. ‘Cory Booker, riding his Big Wheel in affluent suburbia, falls off and skins his knee: He bled the New Jersey soil red.' And so you are very aware if you were born after the civil rights movement, if you were born in my generation, that you stand on the shoulders of giants. View quote
Cory Booker
Working Americans would tell you that the dignity of work is being stripped ... they are working harder than their parents and falling further behind ... while their salaries may moderately have gone up, what has gone up more is the cost of prescription drugs ... child care ... college ... View quote
Cory Booker
We are a part of this take-down culture where people are trying to twist your words. (Cory Booker)
When ignorance and bigotry is allied with power, it is a dangerous force. View quote
Cory Booker
I don't think most Americans realize that the way we raise animals is such a betrayal of the heritage of our grandparents. I don't think they realize that ... these big companies like Smithfield and Cargill and others have our American farmers now living like sharecroppers in constant debt, forced to follow their rules. I've watched the suffering in North Carolina of minority communities who live around Cafos and can no longer breathe their air ... and I've seen workers in the meatpacking plants and how dangerous those plants are. Everybody is losing in this system – except for the massive corporations that have taken over the American food system. View quote
Cory Booker