Top 100 Quotes & Sayings by Ben Sasse

The people I like most are the people who are principled enough on both the right and the left to believe it is their duty to advocate, even though they may lose, and are not committed to their incumbency over the future of America.

The NBA has prided itself on free expression. Its players and owners have a well-earned reputation for speaking out on social justice in the United States. Sadly, it seems woke capitalism stops at the water's edge.

Work gives you meaning. Work turns you into a servant to your family and to your neighbors and to your local community.

Becoming a reader grows our horizons, our appetite for the good, the true and the beautiful, and our empathy.

I'm often asked by search committees for public and private universities to help them think about how to find their next president.

Among the responsibilities of each citizen in a participatory democracy is keeping ourselves sufficiently informed so that we can participate effectively, argue our positions honorably, and hopefully, forge sufficient consensus to understand each other and then to govern.

Living in a republic demands a great deal of us.

The nature and scope of security threats in the cyber era are four-dimensional compared to the early nuclear age.

Since arriving in Washington in January 2015, I have pushed for a strategic framework that clearly articulates how we'll tackle threats in cyberspace.

Courts do not make the law.

I believe zealously in conservative ideals, but Nebraskans want people who get things done, not just those who scream at each other.

Modern technology gives us surprising glimpses into human development. It helps us plan for and celebrate new life.

The USMCA is a good deal for American agriculture.

Our pandering politicians compete to add names to the dependency of entitlement rolls instead of evaluating the success of these programs by how many people leave the dole and are restored to an independence. And these bulging entitlements are saddling our offspring with unsustainable generational debt.

There were giant scale barriers to becoming a nuclear power, whereas launching a cyberattack requires only some coding capability, a laptop and an Internet connection.

The word deepfake has become a generic noun for the use of machine-learning algorithms and facial-mapping technology to digitally manipulate people's voices, bodies and faces. And the technology is increasingly so realistic that the deepfakes are almost impossible to detect.

Abortion is emotional and difficult to discuss.

Congress is where Americans are supposed to have our big, messy political fights. That's because the people who make the laws need to be hired and fired by the people. Don't like the laws? Fire the lawmakers.

One important lesson I learned over and over is that, when you walk into any troubled organization, there is a delicate balance between expressing human empathy and yet not passively sweeping hard truths under the rug.

Obamacare has eliminated choices for millions of families, suffocated patient-centered medical innovation, and moved the United States closer to European-style centralized planning.

Democrats have bad ideas and Republicans have no ideas.

In policy arena after policy arena, Democrats respond to every failure of clunky government by proposing the addition of still more layers to 1960s-era bureaucracies as they break down.

The first time I began to really think about politics was in fifth grade, during President Reagan's first term.

Every day, across our state, we see grit and resilience.

For a Nebraska kid in the late 1970s and early 1980s, Nebraska football was a quasi-religion, so I ran out to get The Omaha World-Herald every morning, salivating for the sports page. My dad, however, required that I read one front page story and one editorial before I was allowed to turn to the sports.

The health of our republic depends on shared principles like the First Amendment, but it is also built on the Teddy Roosevelt-like vigor of its citizens and local self-reliance.

Nebraska Republicans believe that Nebraska Democrats love their kids, and I believe we can have a constructive conversation with everybody.

Few experiences help our kids discover the distinction between needs and wants like the great outdoors.

Government never adapts quickly to new challenges, but our slow-footedness on cyber is unparalleled.

Reducing everything immediately to good and evil is bad history - not only because it isn't true, but because reductionism is unpersuasive; it is boring. Good history, on the other hand, demands that one talk socratically - that one can present alternate viewpoints, not strawman arguments.

Rising political tribalism, shamelessly exaggerating our opponents' claims or behavior, is leaving us vulnerable: No one loves America's internal fighting - and our increasingly siloed news consumption - more than Vladimir Putin.

A family's desire to be able to keep its health insurance when changing jobs or geography (a problem that Obamacare doesn't make any better, by the way) is perfectly reasonable.

Planned Parenthood can't hide their sickening abortion business behind a 'safe, legal and rare' slogan.

Obamacare cannot be fixed and Republicans must not extend this disastrous legislation.

It is good for kids to learn how to work.

Before becoming a college president, I helped over a dozen organizations find strategies to get through some very ugly crises.

Obamacare is a big deal to me. It's terrible legislation.

Keeping our agricultural sector strong and secure should be a bipartisan concern.

We must repeal Obamacare, but even more, we must replace the worldview that underlies and enabled it.

Farmers and ranchers need long-term certainty about who they will be able to sell to and under what terms.

From the first-year students' fall orientation to the board's annual budget-approval meeting, everything a healthy college does requires a shared sense of mission.

Good history is good story-telling. And good story-telling demands empathy; it requires understanding different actors, differing motivations, competing goals.

It doesn't matter whether the challenge we face is large or small, whether it's a statewide disaster or a crisis just on our own block - Nebraskans face it with courage, goodwill, and the unwavering conviction that we are part of one community of neighbors and friends.

Being stuck in adolescence - that's a hell. 'Peter Pan' is a dystopia, and we forget that. Neverland is a bad place to be.

There's no Democratic and Republican seats or gyms or coffee shops at the Supreme Court. Every American should be able to celebrate the fact that we aspire to nine justices who are looking to defend our rights and to defend the Constitution, not to advance policy preferences.

The American work ethic is, thankfully, still deeply engraved in rural Nebraska souls. This is who we are, and we here in Nebraska have far more to teach Washington, D.C. than Washington, D.C. has to teach us.

In America, we divide federal power between the legislative, executive and judicial branches so that no one holds too much power. This is sixth-grade civics: Congress writes the laws; the president executes the laws; and the courts apply those laws fairly and dispassionately to cases.

Members of the Supreme Court have lifetime tenures because they're not supposed to do politics.

I think we should have a universal, a shared cultural or societal goal, of universal health insurance coverage. That's completely different from saying the government can solve all of those problems, or that it can micromanage every aspect of the health delivery system. I think we know that it can't do that.

I don't think that our Founders would believe that America could long prosper if the people were not readers.

We should be reforming our entitlement programs to empower people.

Subsidies and bailouts cannot compensate for uncertain or permanently diminished market access.

I'm a right-wing conservative.

As a former college president, I am well aware that every university is a complicated ecosystem, not a linear widget factory.

I think Medicaid harms people.

An institution of higher education is a partnership among students and alumni, faculty and administrators, donors and trustees, neighborhoods and more, to build a community - and a culture.

We lack an educated, resilient citizenry capable of navigating the increasing complexities of daily life.

I think most Americans believe in a basic social safety net.

The signers of the Declaration of Independence did not pledge their fortunes and sacred honor so the federal government could play 'helicopter parent' to a free people. They saw government as our shared project to secure liberty, doing a few big things and doing them well.

My grandma was a child of the Depression, and knew the tragedy of having her home outside Diller was destroyed by a tornado.