A leader is someone who steps back from the entire system and tries to build a more collaborative, more innovative system that will work over the long term.

The only way to grow the economy in a way that benefits the bottom 90 percent is to change the structure of the economy. At the least, this requires stronger unions and a higher minimum wage.

There will always be a business cycle, and white-collar workers will get hit in the next recession like they always do in recessions.

America has become the most unequal society among advanced countries, and rich people are now free to spend as much money on political campaigns as they wish.

The liberal ideal is that everyone should have fair access and fair opportunity. This is not equality fo result. Its equality of opportunity. There's a fundamental difference.

We're the richest economy in the history of the world. For the majority of Americans not to get the benefits of this extraordinarily prosperous economy, there's something fundamentally wrong.

Social change occurs when the gap between the ideals that people hold and the reality that they see every day gets too large.

We do not want to live in a theocracy. We should maintain that barrier and government has no business telling someone what they ought to believe or how they should conduct their private lives.

It is a myth that higher taxes lead to less demand and slower growth. In the first three decades after World War II, US top tax rates on the wealthy were never below 70 percent.

The largest party in America, by the way, is neither the Democrats nor the Republicans. It's the party of non-voters.

The faith that anyone could move from rags to riches - with enough guts and gumption, hard work and nose to the grindstone - was once at the core of the American Dream.

Umbrellas raining upon me, as these cloudy tears give me shelter.

I have been a teacher myself all my life. I have an intense passion to share with people. Our only salvation is in knowledge, in learning.

I love to write, so it rarely seems like work - even when it gets arduous.

A lot of people think the blues is depressing but that's not the blues I'm singing. When I'm singing blues, I singing life. People can't stand to listen to the blues, they've got to be phonies.

Man is the only one in whom the instinct of life falters long enough to enable it to ask the question "Why?

There is no such thing as failure for an artist, unless failure is the refusal to attempt, the unwillingness to dream.

This is part of human nature, the desire to change consciousness.

People sold everything - their cars, their land for miles, to come in and see me beat. I went to the bank laughing every time.

I think every young cook wants to write a book.

All goal setting must be immediately followed by both the development of a plan, and massive and consistent action toward its fulfillment.