Every advance in this half-century-Social Security, civil rights, Medicare, aid to education, one after another-came with the support and leadership of American Labor.

The measure of a society is found in how they treat their weakest and most helpless citizens.

What are the things that you can't see that are important? I would say justice, truth, humility, service, compassion, love...They're the guiding lights of a life.

America did not invent human rights. In a very real sense human rights invented America.

We cannot be both the world's leading champion of peace and the world's leading supplier of the weapons of war.

All I want is the same thing you want. To have a nation with a government that is as good and honest and decent and competent and compassionate and as filled with love as are the American people.

We become not a melting pot but a beautiful mosaic. Different people, different beliefs, different yearnings, different hopes, different dreams.

The test of a government is not how popular it is with the powerful and privileged few but how honestly and fairly it deals with the many who must depend on it.

America has no functioning democracy at this moment.

If you fear making anyone mad, then you ultimately probe for the lowest common denominator of human achievement.

It is difficult for the common good to prevail against the intense concentration of those who have a special interest, especially if the decisions are made behind locked doors.

Be Positive is not just a blood type.

No one does anything right in life, until they realize that they are making a mistake

I can honestly say that I was never affected by the question of the success of an undertaking. If I felt it was the right thing to do I was for it regardless of the possible outcome.

I didn't end up some sad, tragic guy singing in a lounge somewhere. I never went out and took big money for nostalgia and became like an oldies act.

A penny saved is a penny to squander.

Sexuality, for the person who practices tantra, is a marvelous way to experience illusion. Illusion is just another way of seeing things. There are no illusions because there is no self.

A famous writer who wants to continue writing has to be constantly defending himself against fame.

So I'd be quite happy to have a three-hour Lincoln/Douglas style debate with Barack Obama. I'd let him use a teleprompter. I'll just rely on knowledge. We'll do fine.

Happiness is not the natural state of mankind, and is never achieved from the outside in.

When I was writing 'The Abstinence Teacher,' I really tried to immerse myself in contemporary American evangelical culture.