Medical costs are soaring because our health-care system is totally screwed up. Doctors and hospitals have every incentive to spend on unnecessary tests, drugs, and procedures.

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.

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.

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.

Great leadership is not about giving orders, it's about taking others

I think we need to change that old saying, "I don't need a building to fall on me." Because two did and we still don't get it. I think we all stick our head in the sand as a deep human impulse.

The only thing people are interested in is people.

If an idea seems to find its way towards a stage setting, that's the direction I take. I don't know if I'm trying to achieve anything other than to follow an idea on to the page.

One must have all the virtues to sleep well. Shall I bear false witness? Shall I commit adultery? Shall I covet my neighbor's maid? All that would go ill with good sleep.

People with dark souls have nothing but dark dreams. People with really dark souls do nothing but dream.

If you were starting from scratch to invent an instrument that could impose fiscal discipline, the last one on earth you would come up with is the United States government.

I do not live in the world of sobriety.

The prevent defense prevents victory.

I still can't quite believe it. Although there was something about the fact that it was a first-time writer, a first-time producer, and a first-time director all at the same time.