Quotes From "Promises To Keep: On Life And Politics" By Joe Biden

I believe all Americans are born with certain inalienable rights. As a child of God, I believe my rights are not derived from the constitution. My rights are not derived from any government. My rights are not denied by any majority. My rights are because I exist. They were given to me and each of my fellow citizens by our creator, and they represent the essence of human dignity... Joe Biden

My own father had always said the measure of a man wasn't how many times or how hard he got knocked down, but how fast he got back up. I made a pledge to myself that I would get up and emerge from this debacle better for having gone through it. I would live up to the expectation I had for myself. I would be the kind of man I wanted to be. Joe Biden

To me this is the first principle of life, the foundational principle, and a lesson you can't learn at the foot of any wise man: Get up! The art of living is simply getting up after you've been knocked down. Joe Biden

We must have public officials who will stand up and tell the people exactly what they think.. Our failure in recent years has not been the failure of the people to meet the challenges placed before them, but rather the failure of both our great political parties to place those challenges honestly and courageously before the people, and to trust the willingness of the people to do the things that really need to be done. Joe Biden

Acknowledging that a woman's right to be safe from a gender-based attack was a "civil right, " I believed, was critically important in changing the American consciousness. When a right reaches the status and categorization of a "civil right, " it means the nation has arrived at a consensus that is nonnegotiable. Violence against women would no longer be written off .. Once our criminal justice system -- at the local, state and federal levels -- recognized these as serious and inexcusable crimes, women could stop blaming themselves. . Joe Biden

You should not run for president because tactically you can win. The questions you have to ask are why you're running for president and what will you do when you are president. You shouldn't run until you know the answers to those questions. Joe Biden

The Democratic Party had failed (in 1983) 'to remember waht got us this far and how we got here -- moral indignation, decent instincts, a sense of shared sacrifice and mutual responsibility, and a set of national priorities that emphasized what we had in common. The Party that was the engine of the national interest -- molding our pluralistic interest into a compelling new social contract that served the nation well for fifty years -- became perceived as little more than the broker of narrow special interests. Instead of thinking of ourselves as Americans first, Democrats second, and members of interest groups third, we have begun to think in terms of special interests first and the greater interest second. We have let our opponents set the agenda and define what is at stake.p. 140 . Joe Biden

614246".. in an airport in '64, Goldwater said, 'Well, keep punching, Hubert' during a chance meeting there. By the end of 1977, it became increasingly clear that the Boss (Hubert Humphrey) would not be around much longer. And on the Senate floor one day, Barry Goldwater walked across the aisle and enveloped Hubert Humphrey. Goldwater was so big and Humphrey so frail that Humphrey almost disappeared. The two men stood for a long moment, locked in a hug, and I could see that both men were crying. They made no effort to hide it."– Joe Biden (Promises to Keep: On Life and Politics). Joe Biden

We all know - or at least we are told continuously - that we are a divided people. And we know there's a degree of truth in it. We have too often allowed our differences to prevail among us. We have too often allowed ambitious men to play off those differences for political gain. We have too often retreated behind our differences when no one really tried to lead us beyond them. Joe Biden

America is the promised land, because each generation bequeathed to its children a promise, a promise that they might not come to enjoy but which they fully expected their offspring to fulfill. So the words 'all men are created equal' took a life of its own, ultimately destined to end slavery and enfranchise women. And the words 'equal protection' and 'due process' inevitably led to the end of the words 'separate but equal, ' ensuring that the walls of segregation would crumble, whether at the lunch counter or at the voting booth. Joe Biden

Quoting from Neil Kinnock, running against Thatcher in 1987:Why am I the first Kinnock in a thousand generations to be able to get to university? Why is Glenys the first woman in her family in a thousand generations to be able to get to university? Is it because all our predecessors were thick? Did they lack talent? Those people who could sing, and play, and recite, and write poetry, those people who could make wonderful things with their hands? Those people who could dream dreams, see visions? Why didn't they get it? Was it because they were weak? Those people who could work eight hours underground and then come up and play football? Weak? Those women who could survive eleven childbearings? Were they weak? Anybody really think that they didn't get what we have because they didn't have the talent, or the strength, or the endurance, or the commitment? Of course not. It was because there was no platform on which they could stand. Joe Biden

1983:To my generation has now come the challenge. In the days to come we will be tested on whether we have the moral courage, the realism, the idealism, the tenacity, and the ability to sacrifice some of the current comfort to invest in the future.. I believe that this generation will rise to the challenge.. The experts believe that, like the Democratic Party itself, the less than forty-year-old voters are prepared to sell their souls for some security, real or illusory. They have misjudged us. Just because our political heroes were murdered does not mean that the dream does not still live, buried deep in our broken hearts. Joe Biden

The conservatives could sneer about "social engineering" if they wanted, but I thought that most people believed as I did that government should embody our best hopes and lend a hand to people who were struggling. Joe Biden

Robert Bork, at opening of Judiciary hearings: How should a judge go about finding the law? The only legitimate way, in my opinion, is by attempting to discern what those who made the law intended.. As I wrote in an opinion for our court, the judge's responsibility "is to discern how the framers' values, defined in the context of the world they knew, apply in the world we know. If a judge abandons intentions as his guide, there is no law available to him, and he begins to legislate a social agenda for the American people. That goes well beyond his powers. . Joe Biden

I wasn't built to look the other way because the law demanded it. The law might be wrong. Joe Biden

I kept trying to tell people that just because I was young didn't mean I could speak for all young people. Joe Biden

My own father had always said the measure of a man wasn't how many times or how hard he got knocked down, but how fast he got back up. Joe Biden

My rights are not derived from any government. My rights are not denied by any majority. My rights are because I exist. Joe Biden