In the wake of 9/11, we were desperate to bring those responsible for the brutal attacks to justice. But even that urgency did not justify torture. The United States must be held to a higher standard than our enemies, yet some of our actions did not clear that bar.

Dianne Feinstein

Ninety percent of leadership is the ability to communicate something people want.

Dianne Feinstein

Winning may not be everything, but losing has little to recommend it.

Dianne Feinstein

'No Child Left Behind' requires states and school districts to ensure that all students are learning and are reaching their highest potential. Special education students should not be left out of these accountability mechanisms.

Dianne Feinstein

Banning guns addresses a fundamental right of all Americans to feel safe.

Dianne Feinstein

I basically believe the medical insurance industry should be nonprofit, not profit-making. There is no way a health reform plan will work when it is implemented by an industry that seeks to return money to shareholders instead of using that money to provide health care.

Dianne Feinstein

Women have begun to see that if I go through that doorway, I take everybody through it.

Dianne Feinstein

Let me be crystal clear: There is no such thing as 'limited use' nuclear weapons, and for a Pentagon advisory board to promote their development is absolutely unacceptable.

Dianne Feinstein

Toughness doesn't have to come in a pinstripe suit.

Dianne Feinstein

We have no regulation of drones in the United States in their commercial use. You can see drones some day hovering over the homes of Hollywood luminaries, violating privacy. This question has to be addressed. And we need rules of operation on the border, by police, by commercial use, and also by military and intelligence use.

Dianne Feinstein

Survival is nothing more than recovery.

Dianne Feinstein

At age 14, my paternal grandfather fled Poland to escape the pogroms that killed tens of thousands of European Jews. He worked full-time for a cobbler in Boston, making his way to California and eventually starting his own business in Taft - the Goldman Oil Supply Company.

Dianne Feinstein

Instead of starting a new nuclear arms race, now is the time to reclaim our Nation's position of leadership on nuclear nonproliferation efforts.

Dianne Feinstein

Today we have a health insurance industry where the first and foremost goal is to maximize profits for shareholders and CEOs, not to cover patients who have fallen ill or to compensate doctors and hospitals for their services. It is an industry that is increasingly concentrated and where Americans are paying more to receive less.

Dianne Feinstein

For the life of me, I don't understand what honest motive there is in putting this in front of this body to philosophically debate marriage on a constitutional amendment that is not going to happen, and which is enormously divisive in all of our communities.

Dianne Feinstein

We're not perfect, and there are some dark patches in our past, but what makes us special is that we recognize these evils, we come to grips with them, and we fix them.

Dianne Feinstein

Simply put, Guantanamo is one of the best propaganda tools that terrorists have today. Our enemies use it to justify terrorism and recruit others to carry out violent jihad, and our allies continue to criticize it as a violation of the rule of law.

Dianne Feinstein

Yes, I support the death penalty. It is an issue that cannot be fudged or hedged.

Dianne Feinstein

The criteria for serving one's country should be competence, courage and willingness to serve. When we deny people the chance to serve because of their sexual orientation, we deprive them of their rights of citizenship, and we deprive our armed forces the service of willing and capable Americans.

Dianne Feinstein

Designing new low-yield nuclear weapons for limited strikes dangerously lowers the threshold for their use.

Dianne Feinstein

Nuclear weapons present us with a paradox: We spend billions of dollars building and maintaining them in the hope that we never have to use them.

Dianne Feinstein