Jon Lovett

The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function. That's what you have to do: you have to be confident in your potential and aware of your inexperience.

I spent three years working at the White House and wanted to do something that wasn't about passing bills and resolutions.

I'll always cringe remembering those little embarrassing moments when I said something dumb on a conference call, when my inexperience poked through, when I should have been more solicitous of the judgment of those around me. They're a reminder that it's not mutually exclusive to be confident and humble, to be skeptical and eager to learn.

I'm not insulting Trump supporters; I'm calling the people that CNN puts on television terrible representatives of the views of conservatives.

There is that definition of leadership that says, 'Leadership is convincing people to do things that they otherwise wouldn't have done because you've made them believe it's the right thing to do.' And a great speech can do that.

I had a really fun career in TV right after I left politics.

If you can make someone laugh about something that your opponent or your opposition thinks, that means you've done a really good job of highlighting what's wrong with their argument or their position.

I went into politics for the reasons most people do: ambition, self-righteousness, and a desire to help others.

Regardless of how lyrical or rhetorically gifted they are in conveying big ideas, any candidate can do a good job of giving a speech if the goal of a speech is more than just delivering it well but achieving some end, whether it's convincing people of some issue or persuading them about you as a person.

They're the last human beings susceptible to human shame. Politicians are the only people left for whom, occasionally, shame hurts them. Everyone else, we've sort of done away with it as a concept, and we're hurtling through space like animals, basically.

More and more people support equality for their gay friends and neighbors, and that is not because the 'Duck Dynasty' guy almost lost his show.

Nationalism is not that hard. It's not that hard to incite people against another, and it's also - and this is the harder thing: Democrats have, and the challenge we have all the time, is we believe in governing and governance and trying to find middle ground.