Don't just buy a new video game. Make one.

You can't change Washington from the inside. You can only change it from the outside.

Focusing your life solely on making a buck shows a poverty of ambition. It asks too little of yourself. And it will leave you unfulfilled.

Rather than pointing fingers or assigning blame, let’s use this occasion to expand our moral imaginations, to listen to each other more carefully, to sharpen our instincts for empathy and remind ourselves of all the ways that our hopes and dreams are bound together.

In the unlikely story that is America, there has never been anything false about hope.

If people, whether they are conservative or liberal, left or right, are unwilling to compromise and engage in the democratic process, and are taking absolutist views, and demonizing opponents, then democracy will break down.

Ask Osama bin Laden and the 22-out-of-30 top al-Qaida leaders who've been taken off the field whether I engage in appeasement. Or whoever is left out there, ask them about that.