We do not want to live in a theocracy. We should maintain that barrier and government has no business telling someone what they ought to believe or how they should conduct their private lives.

The rich would do better with a smaller share of a rapidly growing economy then they're doing now with a large share of an economy that is barely growing at all.

I'm quite optimistic when it comes to the capacity of our people to have an honest discussion about what's really going on. What do you think John McCain's candidacy was about? And the early days of Bill Bradley's candidacy? People are hungry for a genuine, no-spin set of ideas and truths. They want their leaders to tell it like it is. There is a great demand for this. Politicians continually underestimate the ability of the American public to understand what's happening to them and what the real choices are.

I think that it's difficult to talk about large questions of economics or social policy without understanding the building blocks of society. And those building blocks are organizations, the people who run them, and the people who work in them.

I think the big problem is you have a vicious cycle of wealth and power in America that`s just gotten completely out of control and you`ve seen it in politics.

Now we're in a very different economy. Throughout the late 1980s and 1990s American management started to do the right things. There was extraordinary investment in technology. The dominant questions now are less how to do it better, how to manage better, how to make the economy better, than how to have fuller and more meaningful lives. Because the irony is, now that we've come through this great transition, even though our organizations and our people are extraordinarily productive, many feel that the nonwork side of life is very thin.

If you're going to be a great guide to what's great for consumers, and, indirectly, for investors, you've got to be very careful about who you contract with and what you're offering.