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.

A smaller government reflecting the needs of the middle class and poor is superior to a big government reflecting the needs of the privileged and powerful.

Social change occurs when the gap between the ideals that people hold and the reality that they see every day gets too large.

In a world where routine production is footloose...competitive advantage lies not in one-time breakthroughs but in continual improvements. Stable technologies get away.

We're the richest economy in the history of the world. For the majority of Americans not to get the benefits of this extraordinarily prosperous economy, there's something fundamentally wrong.

Being critical of the nation is a far cry from being unpatriotic or anti-American. In fact, most social criticism . . . is based on a love of America's ideals and a concern we're not living up to them.

One thing I've learned from 35 years in the classroom is that people learn best when they are laughing, when they are emotionally hit, that it's both the brain and the heart.