Go walk the streets of Beijing. It's pretty hard to argue it isn't a modern city. Now, if you go outside [of Beijing], in the rural areas, that's true. But rural America, you can say the same thing, in Appalachia there's an awful lot of poverty and lack of education.

You can't depend on polls.

I'd be happy to provide advice if anybody asked me no matter who the President is.

Our goal here in New York is to ensure that every child who graduates high school is ready to start a career or start college and to dramatically increase the number of students that graduate from college.

You bet I did and I enjoyed it.

We cannot continue. Our pension costs and health care costs for our employees are going to bankrupt this city.

We have reduced poverty in the world by 50% since the year 1970 - the number of people who go to bed hungry, the number of people that have to sleep without a roof over their heads, the number of people that are illiterate.The world is better.