Quotes from Cory Booker

You can be like a thermometer, just reflecting the world around you. Or you can be a thermostat, one of those people who sets the temperature.

I just know that I'm innovative. I'm a quick thinker... In Washington, I just want to be a senator who finds a way to drive change and not figure out a way to conform.

This November, with the re-election of President Barack Obama, this generation of Americans will ever expand upon the hope, the truth and the promise of America.

I wrote down the grades I wanted in every class.

No matter who you are, no matter what your color, creed, how you choose to pray or who you choose to love, that if you are an American - first generation or fifth - one who is willing to work hard, play by the rules and apply your God-given talents - that you should be able to find a job that pays the bills.

If we invest in ourselves, the collective good, we all thrive.

I think a lot of folks are beginning to feel that the forces that are tearing us apart in this country are stronger than the forces that tie us together. I don't believe that.

The beauty of having your ego checked as many times as my ego was checked in Newark made me recognize how much I needed other people who were very different than me in order to get big things done.

America has seen enough of a handful of people growing rich at the cost of our nation descending into economic crisis.

The process of writing a book has given me a whole new reverence for writers. Mechanically, it is a brutal process; emotionally, it's incredibly healing.

You should be able to afford health care for your family. You should be able to retire with dignity and respect. And you should be able to give your children the kind of education that allows them to dream even bigger, go even farther and accomplish even more than you could ever imagine.

I live in a working-class community that is struggling at the poverty line, where people who work full-time jobs still at my corner bodega use food stamps. Do you think they care what the stock market's doing today or what the GDP number is? No.

We're all tired of a Washington that has these partisan camps where nothing gets done.

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.

We're not called to be a tolerant nation. We're called to be a nation of love.

Give more than is expected, love more than seems wise, serve more than seems necessary, and help more than is asked.

May we help more than we hurt, may we seek to understand more than be understood and may we love more than we judge.

In fact, when I first came to the Senate, people laughed. I had people telling me, 'There's no way you're going to get a comprehensive criminal justice reform bill done.'

This world has a way of trying to homogenize you. Trying to sanitize you. Trying to scrub you of your unique divine genius. This world wants to make you regular.

I spent eight years living without heat and hot water.

I'm worried about privacy issues, I'm worried about Russian attacks. They literally, if you if you look at what their insidious aims are - to divide this country, is to make us hate each other, to make us not to trust media.

Tolerance says I am just going to stomach your right to be different. That if you disappear from the face of the earth, I am no better or worse off. But love - love knows that every American has worth and value, no matter what their background, race, religion, or sexual orientation.

We are all innovators, we all like to use our imagination, which is our greatest tool.

When American citizens pull together, there is little we can't accomplish.