The struggle of ordinary people for a decent living, for security, is as old as the republic, but it's taken on a new and urgent edge. Instead of shared prosperity our political system has now produced a winner-take-all economy.

Journalism's been a continuing course in adult education for me.

Unless you're willing to fight and refight the same battles until you go blue in the face, drive the people you work with nuts going over every detail to make certain you've got it right, and then take hit after unfair hit accusing you of bias, there's no use even trying. You have to love it, and I do. You just hope it strikes a spark somewhere in the critical mass of public opinion and helps some people to resist further the seductions of political and corporate advertising.

In America, one of our two major parties is dominated by extremists dedicated to destroying the social contract, and the other party has been so enfeebled by two decades of collaboration with the donor class it can offer only feeble resistance to the forces that are devastating everyday people.

In fact, so much of life, as you know, is serendipitous. That's why you better be prepared at any time for anything, because it may happen to you.

Scientists investigate that which already is; Engineers create that which has never been. Creativity is piercing the mundane to find the marvelous.

When ideology and theology couple, their offspring are not always bad but they are always blind.