I am the eternal optimist. I think that, over time, people respond to civility and -- and rational argument.

You can’t let your failures define you. You have to let your failures teach you.

Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we've been waiting for. We are the change that we seek.

Keep exploring. Keep dreaming. Keep asking why. Don’t settle for what you already know. Never stop believing in the power of your ideas, your imagination, your hard work to change the world.

When ignorant folks want to advertise their ignorance, you don't really have to do anything, you just let them talk.

Just because we have the best hammer does not mean that every problem is a nail.

Change is never easy, but always possible.

Don’t ever let anybody tell you that your efforts don’t matter or that your voice doesn’t count. Don’t ever believe that you can’t make a difference. You have.

Where you are right now doesn't have to determine where you'll end up.

Learning to stand in somebody else's shoes, to see through their eyes, that's how peace begins. And it's up to you to make that happen. Empathy is a quality of character that can change the world.

If somebody is different from you, that's not something you criticize, that's something that you appreciate.

And power without compassion is the worst kind of evil there is.

We will not engage in an endless process of negotiations.

Brute force, no matter how strongly applied, can never subdue the basic human desire for freedom.

The New York Times Bestseller 'The Amateur,' written by Ed Klein, former editor of the 'New York Times Magazine,' is one of the best books I've read.

I will do everything that I can to make sure that you have good jobs, with rising incomes, that your kids have good educations from preschool through college.

I just try to be the best Catholic.

He who commits a wrong will himself inevitably see the writing on the wall, though the world may not count him guilty.

Nursing her wrath to keep it warm.--Robert Burns

All my old surfing injuries have kind of come back to haunt me.

There are some things for which three words are three too many, and three thousand words that many words too less.