Donald Trump has done more for getting people to understand the importance of public policy that respond to public needs in an affirmative way than anything we could have done on our own.

For many of those who had historically supported welfare programs in the broadest sense, it was perfectly reasonable to enact legislation in which poor people were the objects of efforts to assist them.

The single most important thing you can do politically for gay rights is to come out. Not to write a letter to your congressman but to come out.

I am not aware of any specific provision that mandates any tightening of lending to small business other than a requirement that people who lend and then sell that loan be prepared to take a part of the risk. And I'm proud of that.

If Bob Barr (conservative republican congressman from Georgia) caught on fire and I was holding a bucket of water, it would be great act of discipline to pour it on him. I would do it, but I'd hate myself in the morning.

There was a degree of interventionism in American foreign policy, the notion that we must be the superpower and we have to intervene everywhere, that I think makes no sense.

But when others suggested that the poor should not simply be the objects of these programs but also the subjects - that they should be actively involved in shaping the programs, making decisions about how to spend the money etc. - some of the previous supporters reconsidered.