Education and democracy have the same goal: the fullest possible development of human capabilities.

The idea of democracy has been stripped of it moral imperatives and come to denote hollowness and hypocrisy.

We need a new kind of citizenship, so that we can see citizens as themselves earning the rank of patriot because of their involvement in their community affairs....We as a society need to be encouraging people to focus not just on individual wants but on serving the larger community.

There are three critical ingredients to democratic renewal and progressive change in America: good public policy, grassroots organizing and electoral politics.

Why don't we call on the credit card companies to be accountable? They need to be held accountable for their predatory lending practices.

A politics that is not sensitive to the concerns and circumstances of people's lives, a politics that does not speak to and include people, is an intellectually arrogant politics that deserves to fail.

...how can we live in the richest, most privileged country in the world, at the peak of its economic performance, and still hear the Republicans, and too many Democrats, that we cannot afford to provide a good education for every child, that we cannot afford to provide health security for all our citizens?