I've known Al Franken for over 20 years. He is my friend. He was on the floor of the Senate announcing his resignation. I sat just a few feet away from him. He said it was the worst day in his political life. It was a somber feeling. It was a reality.

We don't want to see the government shut down.

We want to move forward in a bipartisan fashion to solve our problems.

Our party feels that we need to have fair compensation, living wage, good benefits, and decent treatment of workers, and that we can do that and still be competitive on a global basis.

We borrow 40 cents out of every dollar that we spend. We borrow most of it from countries like China. They have become major creditors of the United States and have more power over our economy than we want them to. So dealing with this is not only the right thing economically, it's certainly right from a moral viewpoint.

More people working and paying taxes reduces government expenditures and helps us move a little closer to balance.

My wish is to bring the troops home as quickly as possible.

We ought to deal with Social Security in a separate conversation that is not part of deficit reduction.

When Senator McCain reaches across the aisle to find Democrats to support efforts to make America stronger, he finds plenty of us standing, willing to help him and many other Republican leaders.

I don't disagree with Senator McCain when he talks about the earmark process.

We have to talk about the way we finance campaigns.

I enjoy my job, and I will help my state all I can.

I want to continue to serve as whip of the caucus.

I'm confident ITT will get what it deserves.

I think for all of us who call East St. Louis part of our heritage, we want to make a better day for the city.

This city of East St. Louis needs a tomorrow.

I've been there; I've been in the minority before. It humbles the exalted. But that's all right.

You'll never get progress in Washington until you have a majority, bipartisan majority, that really wants to solve problems.

Like so many large companies in the U.S., Monsanto has prospered in large part due to U.S. taxpayer-funded programs and services.

Where would Monsanto be without the U.S. farm program and world-class research labs?

With every new corporate inversion, the tax burden increases on the rest of us to pay what these corporations don't.

I'm disappointed in Burger King's decision to renounce their American citizenship. I call on companies currently mulling this tax dodge to reconsider and on Congress to protect U.S. taxpayers from more of these schemes.

When you're a kid, you lay in the grass and watch the clouds going over, and you literally don't have a thought in your mind. It's purely meditation, and we lose that.

Women will never be as successful as men because they have no wives to advise them.

Just knowing you don't have the answers is a recipe for humility, openness, acceptance, forgiveness, and an eagerness to learn - and those are all good things.

In my seventies, I exercised to stay ambulatory. In my eighties, I exercise to avoid assisted living.

I did a 'Golden Girls' once, which shot in front of an audience, and that went well. I had a good time. But I need an audience, for comedy at least.

I found out retirement means playing golf, or I don't know what the hell it means. But to me, retirement means doing what you have fun doing.

The Horny Toad in Cave Creek has great food. When I'm in Arizona, I have at least one meal there. I have a daughter who lives out there, and Dee Dee Wood, who was the choreographer on 'Mary Poppins,' lives out there. I still get out there once in a while, but not in the summer.

I never wanted to be an actor, and to this day I don't. I can't get a handle on it. An actor wants to become someone else. I am a song-and-dance man, and I enjoy being myself, which is all I can do.

Television's going, as far as I'm concerned, downhill, and I'm an anachronism.

I asked Fred Astaire once when he was about my age if he still danced, and he said 'Yes, but it hurts now.' That's exactly it. I can still dance, too, but it hurts now!

I have four kids, seven grandkids, and four great-grandkids. Maybe I can become a great-great-grandfather if I hang on!

When I auditioned for 'Bye Bye Birdie' on Broadway, Gower Champion said, 'You've got the job!' I said, 'Mr. Champion, I can't dance.' He said, 'We'll teach you what you need to know.'

Today, if you're not an alcoholic, you're nobody.

The secret to keeping moving is keeping moving.

I was 5 years old when the stock market crashed; I lost everything.

So I think we're kind of an alternate choice for people who have had it with sex and violence.

I wrote a little autobiography about how luck has to do with everything. It's called 'My Lucky Life In and Out of Show Business.' A publisher came to me and said, 'Write a book,' so I did. I wanted to call it 'Everybody Else Has Got a Book.'

I'm not a loner. I have to have a life partner.

I'm really in retirement. My career is over. I'm just playing now and having a great time. I like to keep busy, and I'm doing what's fun for me.

Don't worry so much. Most of the things you worry about never end up happening.

'Chitty Chitty Bang Bang' was a movie that I repeatedly turned down. The movie's producer, Albert 'Cubby' Broccoli, known for his tight-fisted control of the James Bond movie franchise, desperately wanted to re-team Julie Andrews and me after the success we'd enjoyed with 'Mary Poppins.'

As wonderful as they were, my parents didn't teach me anything about self-discipline, concentration, patience, or focus. If I hadn't had a family myself, I probably never would've done anything. Marriage taught me responsibility.

Do you know that I was the anchor on the 'CBS Morning Show?' And my newsman was Walter Cronkite.

Bob Hope, like Mark Twain, had a sense of humor that was uniquely American, and like Twain, we'll likely not see another like him.

I'm always announcing my retirement. I'm still not retired.

I turned down some movies that were quite good. mainly on the basis of taste.

I worked nightclubs all through my 20s, and I was a teetotaler.

But once we got on the air, everybody except Morey Amsterdam pretty much stuck to the script.