Building Consensus Quotes

I have an ability to work collegially across a wide range of interests in the caucus and in the Congress, and an ability to work on a bipartisan basis. Appropriators pride themselves on that.

The way to go from discord to harmony is to go from concentrating on differences to concentrating on similarities.

When I was elected governor of my state, I had a legislature 87 percent Democrat. It was not lost on me that to get anything done, I couldn't be attacking them. I had to find ways to reach out to them.

Barack Obama won a second term but no mandate. Thanks in part to his own small-bore and brutish campaign, victory guarantees the president nothing more than the headache of building consensus in a gridlocked capital on behalf of a polarized public.

Good governance requires working toward common ground. It isn't easy.

I did look for compromise. I worked in a bipartisan way.

By getting your customers to agree with you in small steps along the way, you have a better chance of reaching agreement when it's time to do business.

I think we can end the divisions within the United States. What I think is quite clear is that we can work together in the last analysis. And that what has been going on with the United States over the period of that last three years, the divisions, the violence, the disenchantment with our society, the divisions - whether it's between blacks and whites, between the poor and the more affluent, or between age groups, or in the war in Vietnam - that we can work together. We are a great country, an unselfish country and a compassionate country. And I intend to make that my basis for running.

Leadership is understanding people and involving them to help you do a job. That takes all of the good characteristics, like integrity, dedication of purpose, selflessness, knowledge, skill, implacability, as well as determination not to accept failure.

People are fed up with the various camps, they want to unite.

I feel like I have to do the best job I can to basically say, "OK, I understand - you have every right to be angry, but anger is not a plan. Here's what I want to do, and that's why I hope you will support me, because I think it will actually improve the lives of Americans."

A professional politician's first duty is to appeal to the forces that unite us .... It is our obligation to resolve issues—not to create them.

In the House, I was named one of the most bipartisan members of Congress, and that's a title I plan on continuing to hold in the Senate.

I'm not here to cast aspersions on anyone. I'm trying to unify the party, not find fault.

I'm focusing on the issues that bring people together and build broad majorities.

I know President Obama and Secretary Clinton are committed to bringing America together. This needs to be a time of redemption, not a time of recrimination.