We will not recognize any results that come out of the Geneva 2 Conference, nor will the children or women of Syria do. Those taking part in the conference do not represent the people who sacrificed and shed blood. Besides, who has authorized them to represent the people? Those are confined to newsrooms. In reality, they have no presence on the ground.

To hate him is wrong, and maybe my ego got too caught up in, if I stood here maybe, maybe — just maybe — I could break this record of the man who tried to stop the rights upon which I stand. I’m not here, though, because of his speech. I’m here despite his speech. I’m here because as powerful as he was, the people were more powerful.

No matter what the aggressor intends to do, when the world is truly united, it is then the world, not the aggressor, determines how events develop.

It is a grave indictment of this international community that we can spend so much money on war, in fact trillions are spending on war, but we cannot support action that needs to be taken to meet the most basic needs of billions of people in the world, needs such as addressing hunger, health, empowering woman and making sure that there is development in countries that are vulnerable.

In a democracy, that’s the only realistic path to Net Zero. Consent, not imposition. Honesty, not obfuscation. Pragmatism, not ideology.

So the 20th century taught the world not to use nuclear weapons and not to proliferate. This is not a good strategy because recent history has shown that wars could erupt with equal devastation.

In the past, human progress had to come at the cost of the environment. If we wanted energy, we had to burn wood or we had to burn fossil fuels. If we wanted to grow more food, we had to expand farmland, often at the cost of forests. But technology and innovation means we're very quickly decoupling these impacts, such that this conflict is no longer true.

[Angela Merkel] showed what can be achieved when politicians take the right course of action and work to find solutions to the world’s challenges rather than simply shift responsibility to others.

The hour has come for a new generation to lead the Democratic Congress that I so deeply respect.