Carol Moseley Braun Quotations

The really important victory of the civil rights movement was that it made racism unpopular, whereas a generation ago at the turn of the last century, you had to embrace racism to get elected to anything.

The fact is that the diversity in this political class serves the same interest as diversity in any arena, which is it stirs the competitive pot.

The reason that minorities and women don't have a better shot at getting elected to the Senate or to statewide office is because the campaign finance rules are so skewed as to make it very difficult for non-traditional candidates to raise the money necessary to get elected.

I really think that's the key, part of the spiritual renewal that America needs to have, the notion that we really can have confidence in a better tomorrow.

People just want to hear some common sense... and I bring to bear the experience in local government and state government and national government - I was the first woman in history on the Senate Finance Committee - not to mention the diplomatic international experience.

If we can rebuild Iraq, we can rebuild Illinois and Indiana and if we can do Baghdad, we can do Baltimore.

Well, if you pick a fight with somebody that's smaller than you and you beat them, where's the honor in that?

I think if we are actually going to accept our generation's responsibility, that's going to mean that we give our children no less retirement security than we inherited from our parents.

And frankly, being a woman I think gives me a slightly different take on a lot of the issues and on a lot of the solutions to the problems we face.

I believe that our message of rebuilding America is one that will resonate with the American people.

I think Americans want to believe in this country again.

I want people who believe in my message and where I am on issues to support me.

I'm a results-oriented person and my Senate record shows that.

Im committed to universal health coverage and education.

Illinois has less than a 12 percent black population and I won with 55 percent of the vote.

It's not impossible for a woman - a Black woman - to become President.

We must invest in infrastructure development and rebuilding communities to create jobs.

We're failing our children with education, we're failing our environment.

All I really want to be is boring. When people talk about me, I'd like them to say, Carol's basically a short Bill Bradley. Or, Carol's kind of like Al Gore in a skirt.

I think that we have a responsibility to make certain that we are fiscally responsible in order to assure, frankly, future generations don't have to pay our bills.

I'm used to people not paying me a whole lot of attention and underestimating me and, frankly, for me a big challenge is to have people believe that I can be the president of the United States.

The failure in Ohio to have adequate voting capacity for the people who were registered and eligible to vote was an absolute denial of their right to vote.

The notion that we won the war against Iraq is like saying we won a war against Arizona. I mean, the fact of the matter is it's not that big of a country. Nobody, I don't think, had any notion that we would do anything but win it.

There are a number of steps that we can take to reinvigorate and rebuild the economic and the physical infrastructure of our country and then to rebuild us, frankly, on a spiritual level.

I was the only person of color in the Senate, and my colleagues were Strom Thurmond, Jesse Helms and Trent Lott.

To me, that means getting back to the point where our Constitution means that you don't tap people's phones and poke into their e-mail and you don't arrest people and keep them hidden for a year and a half without charging them.

I want to rebuild America.

We have gone into a war, an unelected president sending us into a war that the Congress frankly had no right, I believe, to authorize.

It's time to take the 'Men Only' sign off the White House door.

If I lose, I'm going to retire from politics, practice law, and wear bright leather pants.

I think it does suggest that the American people really do want to listen to somebody who actually has some solutions, some answers, and gives them some hope.

I think its time to get a reapportionment process that frankly takes out the incumbency protection and the raw politics of the process.

Bush is giving the rich a tax cut instead of putting that cut in the pockets of working people.

I was very productive as a senator for my state.

New Zealand, by the way, where I was ambassador, has had two women prime ministers - one from either party.

It's hard to be the first. It's almost as if I'm subject to a different level of inspection.

The reason that minorities and women dont have a better shot at getting elected to the Senate or to statewide office is because the campaign finance rules are so skewed as to make it very difficult for non-traditional candidates to raise the money necessary to get elected.

There are those who would keep us slipping back into the darkness of division, into the snake pit of racial hatred, of racial antagonism and of support for symbols of the struggle to keep African-Americans in bondage.

I've always maintained that black people and women suffer from a presumption of incompetence. The burdens of proof are different. It just gets so tiresome.

The Islamic community today is faced with a new version of an old struggle. My late mother used to say it doesn't matter whether you came to this country on the Mayflower or on a slave ship, through Ellis Island or the Rio Grande. We're all in the same boat now.

My parents were always philosophizing about how to bring about change. To me, people who didn't try to make the world a better place were strange.

There are no permanent friends or permanent enemies, just permanent interests.

I think the legacy of the civil rights movement is that now whites are more open to being represented by people of color or people who are women or, again, non-traditional candidates.

I am determined to try to rebuild and renew this country in ways that will build community and level the playing field. ... To me, that means making certain that the fight to preserve our civil liberties is waged, making certain the fight against discrimination is waged, making certain that women have opportunity in this country.

Magic lies in challenging what seems impossible.

Defining myself, as opposed to being defined by others, is one of the most difficult challenges I face.

So I think that if we want to have a Congress, if we want to have government that looks like America, if we want to have government that is truly a representative Democracy, then we need to clearly address how we get our campaign laws out of the way of Democracy.

I'd come back after having served as ambassador to New Zealand and found that I had real concerns about the direction in which this country was headed.