I think modern societies have to ask a very basic question: What strategies buy the most health for people? Doctors can do so many marvelous things now. They can keep a corpse alive, almost.

I think we're rapidly approaching the day where medical science can keep people alive in hospitals, hooked up to tubes and things, far beyond when any kind of quality of life is left at all.

We have been maintaining a standard of living by putting things on the debt of the next generation.

To me, the failure of liberalism - the tradition I come from - was not recognizing there has to be justice across the generations.

Let me offer you, metaphorically, two magic wands that have sweeping powers to change society. With one wand you could wipe out all racism and discrimination from the hearts and minds of white America. The other wand you could wave across the ghettoes and barrios of America and infuse the inhabitants with Japanese or Jewish values, respect for learning, and ambition. ... I suggest that the best wand for society and for those who live in the ghettoes and barrios would be the second wand.

I have no permanent enemies - only people I have yet to persuade.

I think that retiring the baby boomers is going to be one of the great challenges in America, that you cannot make fiscal sense out of the future of our children without taking on entitlements.