Top 10 Diane Feinstein Quotes

Dianne Feinstein
(United States Senator)

Dianne Goldman Berman Feinstein  is the senior United States Senator from California. A member of the Democratic Party, she has served in the Senate since 1992. She also served as the 38th Mayor of San Francisco from 1978 to 1988.
Born in San Francisco, Feinstein graduated from Stanford University in 1955 with a B.A. in history. In the 1960s she worked in city government, and in 1970 she was elected to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. She served as the board's first female president in 1978, during which time the assassinations of Mayor George Moscone and City Supervisor Harvey Milk drew national attention to the city. Feinstein succeeded Moscone as mayor. During her tenure as San Francisco's first female mayor she led a revamp of the city's cable car system and oversaw the 1984 Democratic National Convention
After a failed gubernatorial campaign in 1990, she won a 1992 special election to the U.S. Senate. Feinstein was first elected on the same ballot as her peer Barbara Boxer, and the two became California's first female U.S. Senators. Feinstein has been re-elected four times since then and in the 2012 election, she claimed the record for the most popular votes in any U.S. Senate election in history, having received 7.75 million votes.
Feinstein was the author of the 1994 Federal Assault Weapons Ban which expired in 2004. In 2013 she introduced a new assault weapons bill, which failed to pass. Feinstein is the first and only woman to have chaired the Senate Rules Committee (2007–09) and the Select Committee on Intelligence from 2009 to 2015, when the Democrats lost control of the Senate. She is the only woman to have presided over a U.S. presidential inauguration. At the age of 83, Feinstein is the oldest currently serving United States Senator.

Top 10 Diane Feinstein Quotes

America is big enough to admit when it's wrong and confident enough to learn from its mistakes.

He [Petraeus] made a bad mistake, he lost his job as the CIA director. And at some point enough is enough.

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

We have federal regulations and state laws that prohibit hunting ducks with more than three rounds. And yet it's legal to hunt humans with 15-round, 30-round, even 150-round magazines.

I am not a high-tech techie, but I have been told that is not possible.

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

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. 

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

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

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.

Feinstein was born Dianne Emiel Goldman in San Francisco, to Betty (née Rosenburg), a former model, and Leon Goldman, a surgeon. Feinstein's paternal grandparents were Jewish immigrants from Poland. Her maternal grandparents, the Rosenburg family, were from Saint Petersburg, Russia. While they were of German-Jewish ancestry, they practiced the Russian Orthodox faith as was required for Jews residing in Saint Petersburg. Feinstein graduated from Convent of the Sacred Heart High School, San Francisco in 1951 and from Stanford University in 1955 with a Bachelor of Arts in History. Prior to elected service, Feinstein was appointed by then-California Governor Pat Brown to serve as a member of the California Women's Parole Board. Feinstein also served as a fellow at the Coro Foundation in San Francisco.
In 1956, she married Jack Berman (d. 2002), a colleague in the San Francisco District Attorney's Office. Feinstein and Berman divorced three years later. Their daughter, Katherine Feinstein Mariano (b. 1957), has been the presiding judge of the San Francisco Superior Court for twelve years, through 2012. In 1962, shortly after beginning her career in politics, Feinstein married her second husband, neurosurgeon Bertram Feinstein, who died of colon cancer in 1978. In 1980, Feinstein married Richard C. Blum, an investment banker. In 2003, Feinstein was ranked the fifth-wealthiest senator, with an estimated net worth of US$26 million. By 2005 her net worth had increased to between US$43 million and US$99 million. Her 347-page financial-disclosure statement – characterized by the San Francisco Chronicle as "nearly the size of a phone book" – draws clear lines between her assets and those of her husband, with many of her assets in blind trusts.