Cory Booker Quotes

#1. I think I'm drawn to people who dream big, and both films have that. In 'Street Fight, Cory Booker wants to become Mayor of Newark, and in 'Racing Dreams,' three kids want to become NASCAR drivers.

Marshall Curry

#2. There's no good reason that reliably liberal states should be electing senators as friendly to Wall Street as Cory Booker.

Alex Pareene

#3. I'm not defending what Cory Booker said. I'm saying I understand why he has to kiss the asses of the rich people on Wall Street, because there's no other way to keep his city afloat.

Bill Maher

#4. Cory Booker became a millionaire because this is how the economy works for people of his class: Rich people give other rich people money to do nothing, simply because they 'deserve' it.

Alex Pareene

#5. The three people who are most often talked about with Hillary Clinton, whether it's Tim Kaine or Vilsack or Cory Booker, they are three extremely nice people.

David Brooks

#6. I spent eight years living without heat and hot water.

Cory Booker

#7. My family is no different from yours. We may be different from the geography that we come from. Some of you all may pray differently than I do, some of you all may be from a different ethnicity, but we all have the same story.

Cory Booker

#8. These are the themes in life which are consistent in Judaism, Islam, Hinduism - of being grounded in who you are and being engaged in an unjust world.

Cory Booker

#9. I was born after the Civil Rights Movement. I never saw Martin Luther King alive.

Cory Booker

#10. Hopelessness is a really toxic and dangerous state.

Cory Booker

#11. When I go about my own politics, I meet Tea Party supporters who I can work with in Congress, that I find common ground with. I find Tea Party supporters who won't let me get a sentence out without judging me. To say that there is a 'Tea Party supporter' is a gross generality.

Cory Booker

#12. 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.

Cory Booker

#13. Don't let your inability to do everything undermine your determination to do something.

Cory Booker

#14. The more you limit your choices, thereby limiting thought, the more you can simplify your life and focus your energy elsewhere.

Cory Booker

#15. We live in a nation where, when New Jersey figures out how to do something and does it well, and shows progress, it affects other states.

Cory Booker

#16. Let's not judge. Let's draw inspiration from each other's stories - successes and failures - and realize we're all connected.

Cory Booker

#17. If you want extraordinary results you must put in extraordinary effort.

Cory Booker

#18. I'm very concerned about U.S. food policy.

Cory Booker

#19. You cannot find what you do not seek. You cannot grasp when you do not reach. Your dreams won't come up to your front door. You have got to take a leap if you want to soar.

Cory Booker

#20. Our nation was founded with a bunch of founding legislators who joined together to move our country out of the blocks and get us started, and every generation since then has found a way to advance the ball down the field.

Cory Booker

#21. Cities can be places that represent the best of our ideals: where Americans of all different backgrounds can come together and, through their interactions, and even through their unity, spawn true American greatness.

Cory Booker

#22. I debated between law school and divinity.

Cory Booker

#23. Everybody wants to find their soul mate, and I'm no different. That's definitely what I want in the future.

Cory Booker

#24. You were not built for comfort and convenience. You were built to overcome.

Cory Booker

#25. Dream big & have huge ambition, but never forget life is lived in small moments and sustained by simple acts of love.

Cory Booker

#26. When we embraced social media, we took more control of the Newark narrative. We increased responsiveness toward residents. We drew more of our constituents in to participate in government and improve our cities.

Cory Booker

#27. Democracy is not a spectator sport. It is a difficult, hard, full-contact, participatory endeavor.

Cory Booker

#28. I reject the idea that the guy who comes out of Yale and goes to work in the projects in Newark is good, and the guy who goes to work for a white-shoe law firm is bad. We're all mountain rangers. We all have peaks and valleys.

Cory Booker

#29. The mayoral mentality is incredibly valuable. I don't want to lose that.

Cory Booker

#30. Life is about where you are right now, and the choices you make.

Cory Booker

#31. I wrote down the grades I wanted in every class.

Cory Booker

#32. The greatest natural resource our country has is not oil. It's not gas. It's not coal. It's the genius of our children.

Cory Booker

#33. I love talking about the challenges [Newark, NJ] has because of the way they are always brilliantly disguised as opportunities..the biggest global challenge that there is is a challenge of the spirit, a challenge of our vision, a challenge and a test of our ideals, of who we SAY we are GOING TO BE.

Cory Booker

#34. Our platform is crafted by Democrats but it is not about partisanship, its about pragmatism.

Cory Booker

#35. Stand in a way that you are always empowering people to join in, because the only way to be truly successful is not to succeed as an individual, but to succeed as a part of a community, of a country.

Cory Booker

#36. Elections have consequences. So many people want to complain, but they don't want to vote. We can talk about Hillary Clinton. We can celebrate her; we can support her, but if we don't come out and vote for her, for shame.

Cory Booker

#37. I was raised in a very religious home with two parents who were deeply involved in the black church. When I was young, I went to a small black AME church in New Jersey.

Cory Booker

#38. My grandmother from Iowa, she is dancing in Heaven at the prospect that the next president of the United States is going to be Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Cory Booker

#39. Food is at the core of our lives in ways we don't always think about - how it affects our environment, how it affects our health and well-being, how it affects the expense of society, the expense of government.

Cory Booker

#40. Kids born into certain ZIP codes will most likely have certain educational outcomes. And we've got to end that. If we end that, we explode economic development.

Cory Booker

#41. We've got to be entrepreneurial; we've got to be innovative, and we've got to figure out ways of getting things done that people might think are very unorthodox.

Cory Booker

#42. You can't have a physical transformation until you have a spiritual transformation.

Cory Booker

#43. Do not forget from whence you've come.

Cory Booker

#44. Never let your soul be silenced. Live life out loud. Every day tell your truth not with words but with actions from your heart.

Cory Booker

#45. There's too much judgment out there. Really what we need to be doing is just all of us finding our own paths towards living the best lives we can live as clearly and boldly in accordance with our own personal values. And that's what I'm trying to do.

Cory Booker

#46. The gay people with whom I am close are some of the strongest, most passionate and caring people I know, and their demands for justice are no less imperative than those of any other community.

Cory Booker

#47. Real courage is holding on to a still voice in your head that says, 'I must keep going.' It's that voice that says nothing is a failure if it is not final. That voice that says to you, 'Get out of bed. Keep going. I will not quit.'

Cory Booker

#48. My generation of Americans, the scions of daring dreamers, the children of the fearlessly faithful and the offspring of many of history's most audacious actors - we, together, drink deeply from wells of freedom, liberty and opportunity that we did not dig.

Cory Booker

#49. Innovators reimagine our world in so many areas. We need them to help reimagine what government can and should be.

Cory Booker

#50. I thought that Donald Trump's ascendancy would end when he attacked John McCain, saying he's not a war hero. I found that shocking, for him to say that.

Cory Booker

#51. I still have that new senator smell.

Cory Booker

#52. Minorities do not believe this country will give them a fair shake.

Cory Booker

#53. My weakness in life is two men who seduce me all the time - named Ben & Jerry.

Cory Booker

#54. Equal protection under the law - for race, religion, gender or sexual orientation - should not be subject to the most popular sentiments of the day.

Cory Booker

#55. My father was not going to let me sit back and just consume my blessings. He wanted me to contribute, and to do that, you have to be mission-oriented.

Cory Booker

#56. You don't have to be one of those people that accepts things as they are. Every day, take responsibility for changing them right where you are.

Cory Booker

#57. I have seen too many of my male friends - no matter whether they're on the football field or inside a church - bash gays and then revel in their machismo or piety.

Cory Booker

#58. I believe there's tremendous value in having a Supreme Court with a diverse set of experiences - especially when we're dealing with issues that range from our intimate relationships to how we finance campaigns.

Cory Booker

#59. So many great movements didn't succeed the first time, but people kept trying and trying and trying.

Cory Booker

#60. Are there any monuments built to demagogues? I just don't think so.

Cory Booker

#61. I am a geek nerd who happened to have a temporary period of jockiness.

Cory Booker

#62. As a government leader, I'm not going to sit on the sidelines and watch all these other sectors innovate. I'm going to do everything I can as a leader to be in that innovation, to be a provocateur for that innovation.

Cory Booker

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

Cory Booker

#64. When people jump on your mistakes, don't hide from them; let people know that you're human, too.

Cory Booker

#65. One of the very hallmarks of our nation is the ideal of E Pluribus Unum. It is a concept that richly flows from the highest ideals of our nation.

Cory Booker

#66. I don't want to be a race-transcending leader. I want to be deeply understood as a man, as African- American, as a Christian, all that I am.

Cory Booker

#67. As I review the great history of our nation, community organizers have been at the center of so many of our great social movements.

Cory Booker

#68. I think Newark has been in the crosshairs in every generation of the fight to achieve America. And I think Newark is a city that's at that crossroads still.

Cory Booker

#69. We have Donald Trump standing up as one of the greatest fear-mongers in this nation's history. He's trying to make us afraid of each other.

Cory Booker

#70. My parents were obsessed with my education.

Cory Booker

#71. Life's too short not to try different things and to see what works for you and your body.

Cory Booker

#72. First class in life has nothing to do with the clothes you wear, the car you drive or the house you live in. First class is and always will be about the content of your character, the quality of your ideas and the kindness in your heart.

Cory Booker

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

Cory Booker

#74. In college, I was a fiercely committed Democrat - a meeting with Jack Kemp, then Secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development, challenged my blind partisanship.

Cory Booker

#75. We're a nation of hope, of high ideals.

Cory Booker

#76. You are more beautiful than you realize, stronger than you know, more powerful than you could imagine.

Cory Booker

#77. The world you see outside of you will always be a reflection of what you have inside of you.

Cory Booker

#78. I hope and understand that people are getting a better recognition that food stamps is a program that really helps America, helps families in need. It's not a government handout. If anything, it's a safety net that helps people through difficult times and bridges them towards stability.

Cory Booker

#79. These false barriers that we've erected of space and race, all these illusions that we've allowed to infect us like toxins, we've got to rid ourselves of that. We are a better nation when we are ultimately united in a common purpose and a common cause.

Cory Booker

#80. Stay faithful in things large and taking on the world, but stay faithful in those things small - because remember it's the small things, the size of a mustard seed, that ultimately moves mountains.

Cory Booker

#81. I learned about community organizing from my parents. As a child, their stories were so instructive.

Cory Booker

#82. What most Americans don't realize is a lot of the challenges we're struggling with today are the result of conscious housing policies.

Cory Booker

#83. The history in our country speaks to our highest values of people who did not accept things as they are and go along with them. They resisted, they refused to accept the world as it is, they demanded it to be a better reflection of their highest dreams and highest aspirations.

Cory Booker

#84. If you look at great human civilizations, from the Roman Empire to the Soviet Union, you will see that most do not fail simply due to external threats but because of internal weakness, corruption, or a failure to manifest the values and ideals they espouse.

Cory Booker

#85. Our nation was not founded because we all looked alike, or prayed alike, or descended from the same family tree. But our founders, in their genius, in this, the oldest constitutional democracy, put forth on this earth the idea that all are created equal; that we all have inalienable rights.

Cory Booker

#86. The richness of America is that we are diverse. We're not Sweden. We're not Norway. We are a great American experiment. And as soon as we start trying to forget race or turn our back on race, number one, we don't confront the real racial realities that still persist.

Cory Booker

#87. 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.

Cory Booker

#88. My dad set a clear model for me for what manhood was all about.

Cory Booker

#89. Marriage equality is not a choice. It is a legal right.

Cory Booker

#90. There was a small point in my life in law school, right before I moved to Newark, when I didn't know what I wanted to do, and I felt so lost.

Cory Booker

#91. The drug war has been a war where the direct casualties have primarily been America's poor; America's minorities; and often, unfortunately, America's vulnerable, in terms of people with disease and addiction and mental health.

Cory Booker

#92. Before you tell me what you teach and preach, show me how you live and give.

Cory Booker

#93. Listen, don't get my Jersey pride going. We are the most densely-populated state in America 'cause some many people who know the secret want to live there.

Cory Booker

#94. My story starts with my dad, a black boy born to a single mother in a small town in North Carolina. It starts with my parents meeting in Washington, D.C., in the '60s, at a time of incredible activism.

Cory Booker

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

Cory Booker

#96. I have seen things in my life that have broken me in spirit.

Cory Booker

#97. In life, it is never the big battle, the big moment, the big speech, the big election. That does not change things. What changes things is every day, getting up and rendering small acts of service and love beyond that what's expected of you or required of you.

Cory Booker

#98. 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.

Cory Booker

#99. Being vegan for me is a cleaner way of not participating in practices that don't align with my values.

Cory Booker

#100. 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.

Cory Booker