Dick Durbin: “There are parts of Illinois, downstate, that look an awful lot like Kansas.”

You can’t survive in politics unless you’re optimistic. You’ve got to believe that even though you face a setback or you don’t have all the laws you need, that tomorrow will be better.

For decades, America has stood as the bastion of freedom against tyranny, and American presidents have embodied our nation’s resistance to tyrants. Putin is a tyrant.

To leave here without this being a law finalized to protect these young people … is painful, really painful. I don’t want them to feel like I’m abandoning them.

The lowering of the FBI's hiring standards "threaten[s] to undermine the work of the FBI and pose a grave risk to the Bureau's integrity.