I don't think politics has anything to do with left, right, or center. It has to do with trying to do right by people.

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.

Let there be no distance between the words you say and the life you live.

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.

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.

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

Politics is not about power.