“I only know what I have seen. What I have not seen doesn't make my heart heavy.”

“Setiap strategi untuk mengurangi kemiskinan antargenerasi harus dipusatkan pada pekerjaan, bukan pada kesejahteraan--bukan hanya karena pekerjaan itu memberikan kebebasan dan pendapatan, melainkan juga karena pekerjaan itu mendatangkan kedisiplinan, struktur, harga diri, dan kesempatan untuk berkembang dalam kehidupan masyarakat.”

“So, let us summon a new spirit of patriotism, of responsibility, where each of us resolves to pitch in and work harder and look over not only ourselves, but each other.”

“the big house and the nice suits and the other things that our money culture says you should buy ... betrays a poverty of ambition.”

“I'm so overexposed, I'm making Paris Hilton look like a recluse.”

“But by the end of two years, most have either changed careers or moved to suburban schools - a consequence of low pay, a lack of support from the educational bureaucracy, and a pervasive feeling of isolation.”

“But you see, a rich country like America can perhaps afford to be stupid.”

“Once I found an issue enough people cared about, I could take them into action. With enough actions, I could start to build power

“I don't worry about the survival of the novel. We're a storytelling species.”

“We now live in a world where the most valuable skill you can sell is knowledge.”

“Our democracy is threatened whenever we take it for granted.”

“A good compromise, a good piece of legislation, is like a good sentence or a good piece of music. Everybody can recognize it. They say, 'Huh. It works. It makes sense.”

“We are made for this moment, and we will seize it-so long as we seize it together.”

“Mainly, though, the Democratic Party has become the party of reaction. In reaction to a war that is ill conceived, we appear suspicious of all military action. In reaction to those who proclaim the market can cure all ills, we resist efforts to use market principles to tackle pressing problems. In reaction to religious overreach, we equate tolerance with secularism, and forfeit the moral language that would help infuse our policies with a larger meaning. We lose elections and hope for the courts to foil Republican plans. We lost the courts and wait for a White House scandal. And increasingly we feel the need to match the Republican right in stridency and hardball tactics. The accepted wisdom that drives many advocacy groups and Democratic activists these days goes like this: The Republican Party has been able to consistently win elections not by expanding its base but by vilifying Democrats, driving wedges into the electorate, energizing its right wing, and disciplining those who stray from the party line. If the Democrats ever want to get back into power, then they will have to take up the same approach. ...Ultimately, though, I believe any attempt by Democrats to pursue a more sharply partisan and ideological strategy misapprehends the moment we're in. I am convinced that whenever we exaggerate or demonize, oversimplify or overstate our case, we lose. Whenever we dumb down the political debate, we lose. For it's precisely the pursuit of ideological purity, the rigid orthodoxy and the sheer predictability of our current political debate, that keeps us from finding new ways to meet the challenges we face as a country. It's what keeps us locked in "either/or" thinking: the notion that we can have only big government or no government; the assumption that we must either tolerate forty-six million without health insurance or embrace "socialized medicine". It is such doctrinaire thinking and stark partisanship that have turned Americans off of politics. ”

“Let us keep that promise – that American promise – and in the words of Scripture -- hold firmly, without wavering, to the hope that we confess.”