We must regain our vision and hope and move our country forward on an agenda of peace and justice.

We must renew democracy itself. We have to fight cynicism and inertia and restore faith in the advancement of our country.

The best kind of politics is when you help people become their own best selves.

There is an elementary aspiration which undergirds the humane impulse in our history and our culture and binds us together as political activists. This is a simple, irreducible, indisputable aspiration. It is the 'dream of justice' for a beloved community, in which the level of terror in people's lives is sharply reduced or maybe eliminated. It is the belief that extremes and excesses of inequality must be reduced so that each person is free to fully develop his or her full potential. This is why we take precious time out of our lives and give it to politics.

Our aims in political activism are not, and should not be, to create a perfect utopia. What we seek is more simply to improve the quality of human life while at the same time respecting the natural environment which sustains it: 'Not a heaven on earth but a better earth on earth.' This is not at all a timid agenda, far from it. The work ahead of us is enormous!

The future belongs to those who are passionate and work hard.

The people of this country, not special interest big money, should be the source of all political power.