I don't think saying "I was wrong here, I was wrong there" absolves you of anything particularly, nor does it get you into heaven.

I proposed a law that every country where the U.S. has a military base - those people should be allowed to vote in the American election.

There was one moment when J. Edgar Hoover and us had the same distorted lens about who we were - "a real threat," you know? He thought so and we thought so and we were buddies in that regard.

The president of the University said that night, congratulations to you the students, you've won a great victory, now the war will end. And I'm certain that he believed it that night and I believed it and we went away happy. Four days later, Martin Luther King was assassinated. Two months after that, Kennedy was assassinated. Two months after that, Henry Kissinger emerged from the swamp he was living in at Harvard with a plan to expand the war.

You can be disappointed but only if you thought [Barack Obama] was something that he said he wasn't!

Everyone who knew [Barack] Obama from being in Hyde Park knew he was the smartest guy in any room he walked into; a decent, compassionate, lovely person; pragmatic, middle-of-the-road and ambitious.

What we need is a gigantic, messy community conversation about what is teaching and learning for the 21st century. We need to engage communities.