Cory Booker Quotes

Before you speak to me about your religion, first show it to me in how you treat other people; before you tell me how much you love your God, show me in how much you love all His children; before you preach to me of your passion for your faith, teach me about it through your compassion for your neighbors. In the end, I’m not as interested in what you have to tell or sell as I am in how you choose to live and give.

Hope is the active conviction that despair will never have the last word.

Tolerance is becoming accustomed to injustice; love is becoming disturbed and activated by another’s adverse condition. Tolerance crosses the street; love confronts. Tolerance builds fences; love opens doors. Tolerance breeds indifference; love demands engagement. Tolerance couldn’t care less; love always cares more. —

Go out there and swear to this world your oath, not with your words, but with what you do. Not with your hand over your heart, but with your hand outstretched to a world that desperately needs your hand, your help, your insights, your creativity, your honor, your courage. It needs you.

The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any.

The world you see outside of you is a reflection of what you have inside of you.

We all try and live our lives in a way that resonates most with what our purpose is. --from an interview in The Globe & Mail, June 4, 2011

Hope confronts. It does not ignore pain, agony, or injustice. It is not a saccharine optimism that refuses to see, face, or grapple with the wretchedness of reality. You can't have hope without despair, because hope is a response. Hope is the active conviction that despair will never have the last word.

Profound connections exist between all; interdependency so manifest that perceived separation is a delusion. Like a great pool containing millions of drops of water, introduce a stone and all are elevated, poison a part and all are ill affected. You can't connect more or less; the connection exists no matter what our perception. But ignore the connection, deny it, and consequences come.

I believe that we are not a nation of fear, but a nation of love--a love that heals, not hurts, a love that affirms the dignity and humanity of all, not diminishes the poor and the marginalized. I believe that this broken system, which afflicts us all, will be repaired. It must be if we are to hold true to our most precious ideals of liberty and justice for all.

Yes, we do drink deeply from wells of liberty and opportunity that we did not dig. We do owe a debt that we can’t pay back but must pay forward. We are the result of a grand conspiracy of love.

the lines that divide us are nowhere near as strong as the ties that bind us; despite our very real differences, we share common interests, a common cause, and, incontrovertibly, a common destiny. And

Before you speak to me about your religion, first show it to me in how you treat other people; before you tell me how much you love your God, show me in how much you love all His children; before you preach to me of your passion for your faith, teach me about it through your compassion for your neighbors.

Hiram Revels, Blanche K. Bruce, Edward Brooke, Carol Moseley Braun, Barack Obama, Roland W. Burris, Tim Scott, William “Mo” Cowan, Cory A. Booker, Kamala D. Harris, Raphael Warnock: that is the full and complete list of African Americans to serve in the United States Senate in the history of this country.

You need to understand something.' she said. 'The world you see outside of you is a reflection of what you have inside of you. If all you see are problems, darkness, and despair, then that is all there is ever going to be. But if you are one of those stubborn people who every time you open your eyes you see hope, you see opportunity, possibility, you see love or the face of God, then you can be someone who helps me.

...Love recognizes that every person has value, that we need each other, that we are interdependent – that what happens to you matters to me. Love necessitates extending yourself, often out of your comfort zone, making the conscious choice to SEE that person, despite his or her circumstances, as worthy and as vital to you. Love recognizes that if another falls, fails, or succumbs, then we are all worse off and our lives are diminished.

You can’t have hope without despair, because hope is a response. Hope is the active conviction that despair will never have the last word.

Social justice and progress are the absolute guarantors of riot prevention.

It is not enough to be compassionate. You must act. —HIS HOLINESS THE DALAI LAMA

Tolerance is becoming accustomed to injustice; love is becoming disturbed and activated by another’s adverse condition. Tolerance crosses the street; love confronts. Tolerance builds fences; love opens doors. Tolerance breeds indifference; love demands engagement. Tolerance couldn’t care less; love always cares more.

There are two ways to go through life, as a thermometer or a thermostat. Don't be a thermometer, just reflecting what's around you, going up or down with your surroundings. Be a thermostat and set the temperature.

rugged individualism alone did not get us to the moon. It did not end slavery, win World War II, pass the Voting Rights Act, or bring down the Berlin Wall. It didn’t build our dams, bridges, and highways, or map the human genome. Our most lasting accomplishments require mutual effort and shared sacrifice; this is an idea that is woven into the very fabric of this country. You

The more I thought about it, the more I realized that I should do more experimenting with my own truth. In a free market, we vote every day with our dollars, but I had never asked questions about where the things I bought came from, and what I was actually endorsing with my dollars. The more I became aware of those choices, the more I wanted to align my choices with my values.

America is materially rich yet simultaneously has too much material poverty. What made this and other negative conditions persist, he believed, was an insidious poverty of understanding, a poverty of empathy. People's inability to see what is going on in the lives of their fellow citizens, to understand what so many Americans endure, creates an atmosphere that allows injustice to fester and proliferate.

Deterrents properly placed can help. But that is not enough. We are one society, and as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said, what we will have to repent for is not the “vitriolic words and violent actions of the bad people,” but the “appalling silence and indifference of the good people.

But my family also insisted that personal ethic must be seamlessly bound with a larger communal ethic, a sense of connectedness: a recognition that we are all a part of something and have reaped the benefits of the struggles waged by those who had an unwavering commitment to the common good.

Most people don't realize that one shooting like this--barely mentioned in the newspaper--has ramifications far beyond what most people can imagine. It not only shatters a few lives but damages the larger ecosystem in which we live, having impacts on dozens of lives, if not hundreds or thousands.

I celebrate ideals of individual excellence, self-reliance, and personal responsibility… But rugged individualism alone did not get us to the moon. It did not end slavery, win World War II, pass the Voting Rights Act, or bring down the Berlin Wall. It didn’t build our dams, bridges, and highways, or map the human genome. Our most lasting accomplishments require mutual effort and shared sacrifice; this is an idea that is woven into the very fabric of this country.

Her whole conception of our interconnected natural environment gave her clarity to see that injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere--and to reach out to others is very much in one's own self-interest. The transformation that occurs isn't limited to the person who is "helped." Instead, all involved are helped. All are transformed.

Ask yourself what would you do if you could not fail. If you knew for sure you would be successful, what would you do? Who would you be, how would you behave, how would you feel, how would you serve? Answer that question. Feel that. Act like that. And even if you do fail, I promise you that you will be better for it--wiser, stronger, and more capable.

A friend once told me the stars we see in the night sky are light years away – literally, trillions of miles. In fact, some of those stars are dead and gone. Yet we still see the light of a star long after it's gone, as that light continues to travel through space, flowing outward forever. While those stars have burned out, their light has traveled for years to reach our eyes. To us, they still shine. The star may be dead and gone, but the energy, light, and warmth it gave off while living are eternal. Stars die, but their light goes on forever.

I spoke of our need for each other, how we are each other's hope, how when we come together we are strong. How we know that if there is no enemy within, the enemy without can do us no harm. And the enemy within is indifference. It is apathy. It is convictions without courage and ideals without action. It is division. For we know that where there is unity, there is strength.

When fear becomes the norm, it stalks your life relentlessly, lurking and casting shadows over your daily routine. Fear changes you. Fear changes us. My parents worried about me, but they never had to deal with an every-present fear that violence could erupt at any moment and consume their child in an instant, affecting him or her in ways that no hug or loving assurance could heal.

It often seemed like when it came to criminal justice expenditures--just as is the case in infrastructure development, early childhood education, and countless other areas--our society would much rather pay an obscene amount of money on the back end of a problem than pay a relatively small amount up front on evidence based programs that would prevent the problem from happening in the first place.

What we need now, more than anything else, are people who are willing to do the difficult work of bridging gaps and healing wounds, people in our communities who can rally others together, across lines of division, for the greater good, people who reject cynicism and winner-take-all politics, and instead embrace the more difficult work this generation now faces: to unite our country in common cause.

Poor children face staggering challenges: increased risk of low birth weight, negative impacts on early cognitive development, higher incidents of childhood illnesses such as asthma and obesity, and greatly reduced chances of attending college (only about nine out of every one hundred kids born in poverty will earn a college degree). On top of this, poor children deal with greater degrees of environmental hazards from pollution, noise, and traffic, as well as other stressors harmful to their well-being. In a competitive and global knowledge-based economy, a nation's most valuable resource is its children. And yet we are reckless with this treasure.

...Love recognizes that every person has value, that we need each other, that we are interdependent – that what happens to you matters to mea. Love necessitates extending yourself, often out of your comfort zone, making the conscious choice to SEE that person, despite his or her circumstances, as worthy and as vital to you. Love recognizes that if another falls, fails, or succumbs, then we are all worse off and our lives are diminished.

Standing out there on the street, I realized that every person nearby--children, seniors, hardworking parents, and, yes, buyers, sellers, and users--was my neighbor. In major world religions, there is no commandment more fundamental than to love your neighbor as you love yourself. Now I was being challenged to manifest that love: this was a test of my love, of my vision. The world you see outside of you is a reflection of what you have inside of you.

In the end, it is up to us to instruct, inspire, and encourage one another by what we do and how we live. We must all, in this sense, be activists. If we want more connection, we must work harder to connect with others. If we want more unity, we must work to be uniters. If we want more leadership, then we must lead. The most profound changes in our country have come when individuals joined with other individuals in the stubborn belief that they could make change.

This is a question, to go together or go alone, that each of us has to answer. The destiny of our country will surely depend on how many of us choose to join forces and fight the battles of our time, side by side. Cynicism about America's current state of affairs is ultimately a form of surrender; a toxic state of mind the perpetuates the notion that we don't have the power to make a difference, that things will never change. This idea is not only wrong, it is dangerous.

Many people don’t realize that police can’t stop anyone they want just because of a generalized suspicion. There are clear legal standards. Officers may briefly detain a person for investigative purposes only if the officer has “reasonable suspicion” that criminal activity is occurring. Reasonable suspicion is a step below the “probable cause” necessary for an arrest. “Reasonable suspicion” requires more than being in a high-crime area or acting furtive in front of police.

People have themselves to blame for their decisions; that is undeniable. But don't we have a legal obligation to structure a system that is balanced, not savagely slanted against minorities and the poor? Don't we have a fiscal responsibility to take a commonsense approach to reducing the cost to taxpayers? Don't we have a moral responsibility to offer redemption to someone who has paid his debt instead of unyielding retribution against him and his family?... Aren't we a nation that believes our fellow citizens deserve, at some point, a second chance?

My father taught me early in my life that attitude is a conscious choice; it is a currency available even to those with no access to money. No matter what the circumstances, you exercise your power, you demonstrate your worth, when you decide how to act and react in the face of it all. If the world punches you in the gut, that doesn’t define you; it’s what you do next that speaks your truth.

I was taught of a courageous love--of people who could love those who hated them, despised them, and cursed them. A heroic love that leapt lines of segregation, compassion that tore down walls, a determined empathy that saw value in every child regardless of race, geography, or circumstance. An activist love that ignited a nation's moral imagination and galvanized a collective will. Heroes of every faith, color, and sexual orientation, who left behind the comfort of anonymity and marched knowing they would be beaten, boarded buses knowing they would be burned--we are a product of their love. A love that asserted the fundamental idea that we are in this together, bound by destiny, that what happens to my American brother or sister affects me, that our connection mandates an obligation. I was taught of a courageous love.

We had a massive budget shortfall with a structural budget deficit and seemingly no way to close it; the city had been spending at levels way beyond its recurring revenue for years, and the nonrecurring revenue streams were drying up as we entered office, leaving us with no good options. The structural deficit was about $180 million on a roughly $600 million general fund—which meant that if we were to eliminate our debt, we would have to develop or attract new housing and businesses that could generate tax income, identify other sources of revenue, or cut our government by one-third.

As people come to understand the environmental damages being caused by carbon and industry pollutants, there is a call for "full-cost accounting." This is an effort to include the adverse environmental costs of manufacturing and other production in the price of producing those items--from the cost of cleanup to the health impacts of carbon pollution. Currently, companies' profit-and-loss statements don't account for these and other costs, which are paid for by us all, and disproportionately by the poor and vulnerable. By failing to pay for the real cost of production, by misrepresenting or ignoring the vast consequences of some of their work, certain businesses and corporations have pursued paths that are at odds with the interests of society. A greater movement toward full-cost accounting is critical if we are going to align business decisions with what is in the best interests of future generations...

we drink deeply from wells of freedom and opportunity that we did not dig, that we eat from tables prepared for us by our ancestors, that we sit comfortably in the shade of trees that we did not cultivate. We stand on the shoulders of giants.

She had no patience for the idea that we didn’t all bare responsibility to

But there for the grace of God go I.

I wouldn’t encounter the kind of tolerance or lack of judgment that white children would be afforded.

[Tolerance means] I’m going to stomach your right to be different, but if you disappear off the face of the earth I’m no worse off. [Patriotism means] love of country, which necessitates love of each other, that we have to be a nation that aspires for love, which recognizes that you have worth and dignity and I need you. You are part of my whole, part of the promise of this country.

ON JULY 1, 2006, Cory Booker officially took office as the new mayor of Newark. He’d gained fame in the late ’90s as a city councilman who would sleep in a tent at city housing projects, hold hunger strikes and live on food stamps, patrol bad neighborhoods himself and physically confront the dealers holding down their corners. His victory was the first regime change in two decades, and it happened only after six years of near-bloody battling between the young, charismatic, light-skinned, Stanford-Yale-Oxford-educated upstart and the old, grizzled, but equally charismatic incumbent. The tension between Cory Booker and Sharpe James had been national news for most of the ’00s. The 2002 election, which Booker lost, was documented in the Oscar-nominated Streetfight, which between talking head interviews showed intense footage of the predominantly poor, black constituents who ardently supported James’s altercating with the working-class whites and Puerto Ricans who fought for Booker and his eloquent calls for public service and revitalization. The documentary was a near-perfect picture of a specific place and time: the declining city at risk of being left behind, the shoulder-height view of the vast number of problems in play, and the presentation of two equal and opposing paths forward whose backers were split almost definitively along socioeconomic lines. The 2002 election had been beyond combative; a riot nearly broke out when Booker showed up at a street basketball tournament that Sharpe James was already attending, and James called Booker “a Republican who took money from the KKK and the Taliban . . . who’s collaborating with the Jews to take over Newark.” When James—who was constantly being investigated for various alleged corruptions—won the election by a margin of 53 percent to 47 percent, his victory seemed to cement Newark’s representation of “permanent poverty,” a culture of violence and corruption (at least if you subscribed to the New York Times).

Don't speak to me about your religion; first show it to me in how you treat other people. Don't tell me how much you love your God; show me in how much you love all God's children. Don't preach to me your passion for your faith; teach me through your compassion for your neighbors. In the end, I'm not as interested in what you have to tell or sell as I am in how you choose to live and give.

When we judge, we invite judgment. When we hate, we invite hatred. But when we are kind, we invite kindness & when we love, we invite love.