We lose ourselves when we compromise the very ideals that we fight to defend. And we honor those ideals by upholding them not when it's easy, but when it is hard.

There are certain things we can only do together. There are certain things only a union can do. Only a union could harness the courage of our pioneers to settle the American west, which is why President Abraham Lincoln passed a Homestead Act giving a tract of land to anyone seeking a stake in our growing economy.

The countries who out-educate us today will out-compete us tomorrow.

We've got an extraordinarily complex tax system that's full of loopholes that are exploited by special interests. I'd like to see those loopholes closed.

If we are not serious about facts and what's true and what's not. And particularly in an age of social media where so many people are getting their information in sound bites and snippets off their phones, if we can't discriminate between serious arguments and propaganda, then we have problems.

The irony is that we've seen this model work really well in Massachusetts because Gov. Romney did a good thing, working with Democrats in the state to set up what is essentially the identical model and, as a consequence, people are covered there. It hasn't destroyed jobs. And as a consequence, we now have a system in which we have the opportunity to start bringing down costs as opposed to just leaving millions of people out in the cold." "Gov. Romney said this has to be done on a bipartisan basis

Mandela's commitment to democracy was ratified not only by his election, but by his willingness to step down from power