For me, Barack Obama's election was a milestone of the most extraordinary kind. On the day he was elected I felt such hope in my heart. I thought we were seeing the beginning of a new era of equal opportunity across race and gender such as America had never known before.

We must all learn a good lesson - how to live together. That is the new challenge of the new world... learning to co-exist and not co-annihilate.

Leadership cannot just go along to get along. Leadership must meet the moral challenge of the day.

Those who have the most wealth and the most property, their children have the first, the best, and the most.

I didn't know my Dad - he moved out early. And my mom's politics were kind of hardscrabble. She didn't think about Democrats or Republicans. She thought about who made sense. I've been both in my life.

The only reason to be in politics is public service. There's no other reason. Frankly, if that's the best job you can get in terms of money, that's too bad, you know. Because frankly, it's not well paid, everyone knows that. So for most people it's a big sacrifice.

For me, true and authentic democracy occurs when the privileged groups assist the unprivileged groups to become more privileged.

You can't fall back on the private sector and say, 'You take care of the nation's banking system.' That's a fundamental function of the government, the Federal Reserve, the Treasury and the FDIC, etc. All of those agencies have a major role to play there.