The first step in solving any problem is recognizing there is one - America is not the greatest country in the world anymore.

Education is the silver bullet. Education is everything. We don't need little changes, we need gigantic, monumental changes. Schools should be palaces. The competition for the best teachers should be fierce. They should be making six-figure salaries. Schools should be incredibly expensive for government and absolutely free of charge to its citizens, just like national defense. That's my position. I just haven't figured out how to do it yet.

President Bartlet: There's a delegation of cardiologists having their pictures taken in the Blue Room. You wouldn't think you could find a group of people more arrogant than the fifteen of us, but there they are, right upstairs in the Blue Room.

If you close your eyes you can imagine the hackers sitting in a room, combing through the documents to find the ones that will draw the most blood. And in a room next door are American journalists doing the same thing. As demented and criminal as it is, at least the hackers are doing it for a cause. The press is doing it for a nickel.

I've never met anyone who has said, "My goal is to make America mediocre." That's a kind of hard-right conservative fallacy.

Government should be a place where people can come together, and no one gets left behind. No one…gets left behind. An instrument of good.

Good writers borrow from other writers. Great writers steal from them outright.