That is the nature of democracy. It is hard. It is not always inspiring.

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.

Tomorrow is promised to no one so live your life fully everyday.

They were marketing me as a teen idol, when the stuff on the record was not what teen idols were doing at the time.

The belly is an ungrateful wretch, it never remembers past favors, it always wants more tomorrow.

As I get ready to buy a new computer, I'm stunned at all the many micro drafts, of different chapters and scenes and whatnot, that litter the hard drive.

I haven't been to a gas station in years. It feels so good not to be a slave to gas, playing the whole game of war for oil.

When I'm on stage, I get real happy there. Maybe that's the only time in my adult life I feel like myself.

For one true measure of a nation is its success in fulfilling the promise of a better life for each of its members. Let this be the measure of our nation.

What does it say about a society that it devotes more care and patience to the selection of those who handle its money than of those who handle its children?

I love key lime pie, although it's never made the proper way.

Prose proposes, verse reverses.