Top 74 Quotes & Sayings by Russ Feingold

I was one of 14 senators to vote against the Defense of Marriage Act. I thought it was a harsh and unnecessary thing to do to people across this country who care enough about each other to want to be married.

We should not use special budget procedures to jam through legislation to drill in the Arctic Refuge. This topic is too important to the public to address it in such a back-door manner. We should be having a full, open discussion of the issue during an energy debate.

Well, my view is that the insurance companies have done awfully well and spent a lot of money on a lot of things that don't have anything to do with health care.

Unfair trade agreements, passed by both Republicans and Democrats, have sent millions of jobs to other countries. We need to stop this hemorrhaging and find ways for American workers to compete in the new market.

I'm proud to be a Democrat.

I've been outspent by my opponents every time I've run for U.S. Senate.

Tea Party people know that I stood against the Wall Street scam from Day One, that I voted against TARP, that I voted against repealing Glass-Steagall Act that kept these guys under some control.

We need to get rid of the Federal Elections Commission. It's a joke. It doesn't enforce the law.

Money in politics is a huge issue.

What is the harm of doing the right thing? What is the harm of doing our job as legislators and making sure we do not stick the entire bankruptcy community with these provisions that do not make any sense?

I'm one of the only members of the U.S. Senate who isn't a millionaire. And there's absolutely nothing wrong with being a millionaire. But there ought to be a little economic diversity in the Senate and I try to provide it.

If a trip is worth taking, members of Congress should be prepared to justify paying for it out of their office accounts.

The notion of American exceptionalism is effective in part because there is little on the face of it that is offensive.

Instead of taking a very high-paying type of law job or something that I might be able to do, I have been a legislator. That's what I do. I think it's an honorable profession - if you're honest and have integrity and work hard.

Health care for all Americans is the most pressing domestic issue today. It's far past time for the President and Congress to deliver health care to everyone.

There's a tendency on the part of Americans, all of us, to say, 'Hey, the Cold War is over, the Soviet Union is gone, we don't have to worry about these guys again.' We always have to be worried about them, we always have to be concerned about them, and we have to be well-informed.

This has not been a legislative process worthy of the Senate. Members of the Judiciary Committee, as I just said, were implored to save their amendments for the floor. Then, when we got here, we were told no amendments could be accepted.

When you buy toothpaste or detergent or gas, that is now used for the first time in your lifetime or my lifetime to support candidates in so-called 'independent ads.' Same thing for unions.

Occupy Wall Street is a real movement.

Most of my town hall meetings had always been love fests, and some of my guys used to complain: 'I'd like for somebody to yell at you a bit.'

I don't want to hear again from the attorney general or anyone on this floor that this government has shown it can be trusted to use the power we give it with restraint and care.

I don't know how it could be more stark or clear: this entire society is being dominated by corporate power in a way that may exceed what happened in the late nineteenth century, early twentieth century.

It is not only all right but necessary to stand up to George Bush.

The idea of allowing corporations to have unlimited influence on our democracy is very dangerous, obviously.

The administration has a disturbing pattern of behavior when it comes to budgeting not only for the ongoing operations in Iraq and Afghanistan but also for military requirements not directly related to these conflicts.

There is nothing more American than peaceful protest.

The conservative version of American exceptionalism has become a password of sorts for candidates who want to prove their credentials to a right-wing America.

It is not patriotic to decide to destroy a new president who was duly elected by an overwhelming margin. It is un-patriotic to resolve to destroy that presidency.

I believe in local control of education.

The Tea Party ended up being a shill for corporate America.

Speech doesn't corrupt. Money corrupts, and money isn't speech.

The most significant impact is what it does in terms of the integrity of the legislative process and the executive process, as opposed to what it does for campaigns. But to remove this unheard of process in the 1990s, where members of Congress are being pushed and shoved every Tuesday to ask for $100,000, $500,000, a million dollars from corporations, unions, and individuals, this was never allowed in American history.

Congress has lost its way if we don't hold this President accountable for his actions.

People whose terms go for five years or longer, like FCC commissioners. That's a higher standard. Then district judges, who are appointed for a lifetime but can be overruled. Then Court of Appeals judges. They're not the highest level, but they're almost the final word. And then, of course, the Supreme Court.

It's time to refocus our global fight against terrorism. We must move away from the Iraq-centric policies that are draining our resources and focus on Al Qaeda and its affiliates who are reportedly operating in some 60 to 80 countries around the world.

I have long believed that Israel should seek to give up the so-called Occupied Territories in return for security, and that a Palestinian state should be established. I have felt that way all my life. I think it is unreasonable to ask the Israelis to do this in a context where there is no guarantee at all that suicide bombers will be controlled.

Children are not being assaulted by images that appear on a computer screen. Any Internet user knows it is quite difficult to stumble across pornography.

Its the reality of a situation like this that when you have a large troop presence that it has the tendency to fuel the insurgency, because they can make the incorrect and unfair claim that somehow the United States is here to occupy this country, which of course is not true.

It will make the Tea Party look like a tea party.

When the President picks someone who is his ideological soul mate, that's his right, in my reading of "advise and consent." I do think, though, the more you get up the ladder, when someone is no longer accountable to the President, and more importantly, will stay in office after the President, the standard gets tougher and tougher.

I believe that the Israelis and the Palestinians, by and large, want peace, they each want their own country, and they want to get along, and they are going to get along. I know it sounds unbelievable, but I know enough about this, having been there, that these are sophisticated people. It's not like in Pakistan, where people have been told about Jews for a thousand years but don't know any. The Palestinians know the Jews.

Opening up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling is bad public policy that has no place in the budget process,. The Budget Committee needs to leave drilling in the Arctic Refuge behind and focus on crafting this year's budget package.

The president and others say that if we leave, it will just be chaos in Iraq. Well, right now when you come to Iraq, you can't even drive from the airport to the Green Zone.

In my opinion, we need to again consider the possibility of public funding of congressional elections, following the very successful experience with clean money systems in Maine and Arizona.

The President's pre-1776 mentality is hurting America and fracturing the foundation on which our country has stood for 230 years. The President can't just bypass two branches of government, and obey only those laws he wants to obey.

Health care is still the number-one issue out there. Someone who seizes it, I think, will do very well in an election. Let's face it: Clinton's two big issues were the middle class tax cut, which he dropped, wisely, at the time to help reduce the deficit, and health care. That's what he ran on.

Why should we believe people who constantly try to push these trade agreements and won't even admit when one has gone wrong? It makes working people feel like the process is rigged. The reason is, it is rigged.

It's just really tragic after all the horrors of the last 1,000 years we can't leave behind something as primitive as government-sponsored execution.

It is crucial that civil liberties in this country be preserved, otherwise the terrorists will win the battle against American values without firing another shot.

I'm young, and I'm fortunate to be in good health, although I do get tired. Sometimes my wife refers to me as Mr. Excitement because of the number of naps it takes to keep this going.

I want to see a more progressive Democratic ticket. I'm not happy with the Democratic Leadership Council's dominance of the party. And although I'm unlikely to be the person, I want Wisconsin's progressivism to influence the ticket. And we'll do better as a party if we do. We'll have more energy. We'll have a broader tent.

Cuts to Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security benefits are unacceptable, and they shouldn’t be put on the table by Democrats for any reason...

Jews know the Palestinians. And they know they're not really different. And they know they are from the same background. And they know if they coordinated that they could be an economic success and a real basis for a rebirth in the Middle East.

Make no mistake, our military readiness is already suffering. According to a recent RAND study, the Army has been stretched so thin that active-duty soldiers are now spending one of every two years abroad, leaving little of the Army left in any appropriate condition to respond to crises that may emerge elsewhere in the world.

Americans want to defeat terrorism and they want the basic character of this country to survive and prosper. They want both security and liberty, and unless we give them both, and we can if we try, we have failed.

He's got to do better than the shoddy piecing together of flimsy evidence that contradicts the briefings we have received by various agencies. I'm not hearing the same things at the briefings that I'm hearing from the president's top officials.

I do think there would be a receptivity to somebody who campaigned in a straightforward, cohesive way, supporting an increase in the minimum wage, being for universal health care for all Americans, and opposing trade agreements like NAFTA.

That's what I like about you, senator, you're kicking it old-school.

It's not enough to be in the majority, you have to stand for something.

The Democrats were in the majority in the U.S. Senate when we voted for the Iraq war and passed the U.S. Patriot Act. It's not enough to be in the majority, you have to stand for something.