The US government should not be in the business of discrimination.

If we want unity, we must all be unifiers. If we want accountability, each of us must be accountable for all we do.

Truly, the challenges we face are not Democratic challenges or Republican challenges. In fact, they are not political challenges at all; they are fiscal challenges, and educational challenges, and the challenges of figuring out how to take care of each other...

Vernon Reis opened the world to me through books. He taught me that while I was physically firmly planted in blue-collar Auburn, Washington in the 50s and early 60s, intellectually I could go anywhere, explore anything, and sample exciting new ideas simply by opening a book.

I will never be able to create a budget from scratch with the amount of time that I have, but my instructions remain the same: Give me a budget that has no new revenue.

We may disagree on some things, but we can do so without being disagreeable.

We need to take advantage of the opportunity we have now to create a vision and become great.