Dick Durbin: “I want to thank you and the ranking member for allowing me to attend this subcommittee.”

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.

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.

Public executions have no place in a democracy.

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.