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.”
― Cory Booker

“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. —”
― Cory Booker, United

“Hope is the active conviction that despair will never have the last word.”
― Cory Booker

“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.”
― Cory Booker

“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.”
― Cory Booker, United: Thoughts on Finding Common Ground and Advancing the Common Good

“The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any.”
― Cory Booker, United

“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.”
― Cory Booker, United: Thoughts on Finding Common Ground and Advancing the Common Good

“The world you see outside of you is a reflection of what you have inside of you.”
― Cory Booker, United

“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.”
― Cory Booker, United: Thoughts on Finding Common Ground and Advancing the Common Good

“...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.”
― Cory Booker, United: Thoughts on Finding Common Ground and Advancing the Common Good

“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”
― Cory Booker

“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.”
― Cory Booker, United: Thoughts on Finding Common Ground and Advancing the Common Good

“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.”
― Cory Booker, United: Thoughts on Finding Common Ground and Advancing the Common Good

“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.”
― Cory Booker, United: Thoughts on Finding Common Ground and Advancing the Common Good

“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.”
― Cory Booker, United

“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.”
― Cory Booker, United: Thoughts on Finding Common Ground and Advancing the Common Good

“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.”
― Cory Booker, United: Thoughts on Finding Common Ground and Advancing the Common Good

“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.”
― Cory Booker, United: Thoughts on Finding Common Ground and Advancing the Common Good

“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”
― Cory Booker, United

“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”
― Cory Booker, United

“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.”
― Cory Booker, United

“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.”
― Cory Booker, United: Thoughts on Finding Common Ground and Advancing the Common Good

“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.”
― Cory Booker, United: Thoughts on Finding Common Ground and Advancing the Common Good

“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.”
― Cory Booker, United: Thoughts on Finding Common Ground and Advancing the Common Good

“Social justice and progress are the absolute guarantors of riot prevention.”
― Cory Booker, United

“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.”
― Cory Booker, United: Thoughts on Finding Common Ground and Advancing the Common Good

“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.”
― Cory Booker, United: Thoughts on Finding Common Ground and Advancing the Common Good

“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.”
― Cory Booker, United

“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.”
― Cory Booker, United: Thoughts on Finding Common Ground and Advancing 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.”
― Cory Booker, United: Thoughts on Finding Common Ground and Advancing the Common Good