As important as it is to change the light bulbs, its more important to change the laws

We've seen the bankruptcy of many newspapers. We've seen a further erosion of the line between news and entertainment. But I do believe that there is reason to hope that over time we will see the higher-quality journalism rise to the surface.

We need to put a price on carbon, and that's what cap-and-trade does and that's also what a CO2 tax does. As long as our current valuation in the marketplace tells us every minute of every day that it's perfectly all right to dump 90 million tons of global warming into the thin atmosphere surrounding the planet every 24 hours as if that atmosphere is an open sewer, then the individual actions are not going to solve the problem.

Most people in politics draw energy from backslapping and shaking hands and all that. I draw energy from discussing ideas.

The ability of big money to shape perceptions - where you have four anti-climate lobbyists for every single member of the House and Senate - is a big factor.

(George Bush) betrayed this country! He played on our fears. He took America on an ill-conceived foreign adventure dangerous to our troops, an adventure preordained and planned before 9/11 ever took place!

The gay rights movement of recent years has been an inspiring victory for humanity and it is in the tradition of the civil rights movement when I was a young boy in the South, the women's suffrage movement when my mother was a young woman in Tennessee, the abolition movement much farther back, and the anti-apartheid movement when I was in the House of Representatives. All of these movements have one thing in common: the opposition to progress was rooted in an outdated understanding of morality.