Quotes from Sherrod Brown

nineteenth-century Populist Party leader Tom Watson as he spoke to his white and black followers: "The accident of color can make no difference in the interest of farmers, croppers, and laborers … You are kept apart that you may be separately fleeced of your earnings."3

In 1957, General Douglas MacArthur said, "Our government has kept us in a perpetual state of fear—kept us in a continuous stampede of patriotic fever—with the cry of a grave national emergency … Yet, in retrospect, these disasters seem never to have happened, seem never to have been quite real.

The public intuitively understood that Social Security, as FDR's grandson James Roosevelt, Jr., wrote, "could not be better managed. It returns more than 99 cents to beneficiaries on every dollar collected … I dare you to find a private retirement plan that can claim that." In a matter of only a few weeks, President Bush's privatization scheme was dead.

Gore was one of the last of Tennessee's Roosevelt Democrats to hold office; men unafraid of the word liberal, if it meant they stood up against powerful corporations and political interest in favor of ordinary people.

the public has always loved Social Security; they do not want it to change; they like it the way it is. In fact, the only real criticism from the public is that the cost of living adjustment (the COLA) is inadequate in keeping up with rising costs.

By 1968 you can't say 'nigger'—that hurts you. Backfires. So you can say stuff like forced busing, states' rights, and all that stuff.

President Reagan ran on practically the same platform that I ran on in 1948: less federal intervention, less federal control, and less federal spending.

Democracy implies government by the people. Aristocracy implies a government of the rich … and in those words are contained the sum of party distinction.

true believers in the ability of government to do good—often find it difficult to limit themselves to a few issues.

Most of the progressive changes in this country—from civil rights to Medicare, from strong environmental laws to Obamacare—happened in the face of southern resistance, with few southern votes in the Congress.

The investigations conducted by Black confirmed what so many Americans thought: much of the economic and social pain that Americans were suffering was a result of the greed and profligacy of the owners of capital and their stooges who populated the halls of Congress and the corridors of the statehouses. And the only way to fix that was the regulatory zeal of the New Deal.

regulations, a steeply graduated income tax, child labor protections, and workers' compensation

Black saw the connection between crime and poverty.

More recently, progressives have fought for abortion rights, universal health care, strong environmental laws to combat climate change, equal rights for gay and transgender Americans, gun safety laws, consumer protections, and a ban on political contributions from corporations.

Like most legislators throughout U.S. history, the senators of Desk 88 have been disproportionately white and male.

Black understood something that so many in our country still do not: that low prices, brought on by deflation in the days of the Great Depression or by the globalization of the twenty-first century, cannot substitute for an economy that puts its emphasis on job creation and good wages.

He knew how dignity of work meant that a hard day's labor should provide a decent standard of living.

Never mind the fact that trickle-down economics never quite seemed to trickle down to white working-class voters either—that tax cuts and trade agreements favored Wall Street and the Republican donor class, that the real welfare fraud is large U.S. corporations' fleeing overseas to hire cheap labor and avoid environmental rules, and then collecting a tax break from their allies in the White House and Congress.

Fundamentally, special-interest Washington does not understand—or care to understand—collective bargaining: that workers give up wages today so that they can provide for their health care and a secure retirement; those were the legacy costs that Republican senator after Republican senator criticized.

A man doesn't think of change when he is ignorant of any alternative.

The overwhelming number of Democrats... think our trade policy has gone in the wrong direction. They think that our trade policy encourages companies to leave the country. They think our trade policy has caused more and more businesses to outsource.

There is no war on coal. Period. There are more coal jobs and more coal produced in Ohio than there were five years ago, in spite of the talking points and the yard signs.

We know that, too often, oil and other hazardous materials are shipped across the country on aging tankers. Too many communities have seen what happens when trains derail and in some cases catch fire.

If we expect to continue our leadership in the global economy, we must invest in a long-term transportation plan -f or both highways and transit programs. Too many of our roads, bridges, and railways have fallen into disrepair.