Quotes from Evan Bayh

There are not enough purple states. No one votes in primaries, except the most ideological. And big money comes in to support or oppose the candidates in those primaries.

Sometimes you have to make tough decisions to hold the line on spending.

Across the country military families are facing dire financial circumstances due to longer than expected tours of duties. They are being penalized for their patriotism - no one should have to choose between doing right by their country and doing right by their families.

Those who obstruct the Senate should pay a price in public notoriety and physical exhaustion. That would lead to a significant decline in frivolous filibusters.

Sometimes, when I come back to Washington from Indiana, I feel like an ambassador to a foreign country.

I intend to continue to fight for the things I think are right for my country.

Baseball may be our national pastime, but the age-old tradition of taking a swing at Congress is a sport with even deeper historical roots in the American experience. Since the founding of our country, citizens from Ben Franklin to David Letterman have made fun of their elected officials.

We must do all we can to help improve the deplorable human rights situation of the North Korean people.

No one ever built the filibuster rule. It just kind of was created.

As with any difficult challenge that the public and policymakers face, there is no single solution or silver bullet that will serve as the answer to how the United States works to reduce carbon emissions.

Ultimately, the American people ourselves need to decide we care more about practical solutions and progress than we do about brain-dead ideology and political wrangling.

I've always cared about education, and I worked with Senator Schumer on making several thousand dollars of college tuition tax deductible. That will help a lot of your middle class families make college more affordable.

The United States depends on South Korea and Japan to help promote American values in East Asia.

My father, Birch Bayh, represented Indiana in the Senate from 1963 to 1981. A progressive, he nonetheless enjoyed many friendships with moderate Republicans and Southern Democrats.

The only way Democrats can govern in this country is by making common cause with moderates and independents.

There's a high level of frustration with the two-party system out there.

We shouldn't have someone working in the Oval Office trying to discredit and smear a private individual who's just speaking their mind about an important issue facing the country. That is not going to move our nation forward.

I like a lot of my Republican colleagues, starting with my friend from Indiana, Senator Lugar. We've had an excellent relationship.

We need leaders who appeal to us to think about something other than narrow self-interest but instead focus upon the greater good.

You now have six-year campaigns for the Senate - you never stop running. It's not uncommon for a member of the Senate to have a fundraising breakfast, a fundraising lunch and a fundraising dinner, and then when the Senate breaks for the week to go home, more fundraisers. And that's driven by the cost of campaigning.

My father was on the Judiciary Committee all 18 years. He had a good personal relationship with Jim Eastland. They probably didn't agree on practically anything, or very little, from a public policy standpoint. But they were willing to work through that to see what they could get done just because they knew each other and liked each other.

My mother wrote a book. Unfortunately, it ended up being published posthumously. But I'm glad she did, because it taught me a lot about my family that, otherwise, I probably wouldn't know.

What we need to do is to come together as a people and solve the problems facing our country. And unfortunately, Washington is just not doing enough of that these days.

You wouldn't run for the United States Senate or for governor or for anything else without answering people's questions about what you believe. And I think the Supreme Court is no different.