I don't divide the world into the weak and the strong, or the successes and failures...I divide the world into the learners and non-learners.

I don't divide the world into the weak and the strong, or the successes and failures...I divide the world into the learners and non-learners.

9/11 was a signal that we were living in a new world - a world of interdependence, a world in which people could attack the United States not from the outside, but from the inside. It was a sign that the United States, the most powerful country in the world, could watch the cathedral of capitalism at the Trade Center and the heart of its defense at the Pentagon be struck internally, not really across borders, so that borders don't matter anymore.

Having created the conditions that make markets possible, democracy must do all the things that markets undo or cannot do.

Independence used to be the ticket for liberty. But today, security and freedom, whether it's in the Arab Spring, whether it's in Iraq or whether it's right here in the United States, means working cooperatively and interdependently with others.

Jefferson thought schools would produce free men: we prove him right by putting dropouts in jail.

I divide the word into learners and nonlearners. There are people who learn, who are open to what happens around them, who listen, who hear the lessons. When they do something stupid, they don't do it again. And when they do something that works a little bit, they do it even better and harder the next time. The question to ask is not whether you are a success or a failure, but whether you are a learner or a nonlearner.