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.

The presidency is probably the loneliest office in America. Regardless of your friends, regardless of how good your marriage is, regardless of anything, you are alone there at the top.

The only sure way to stop excessive risk taking on Wall Street so you don't risk losing your job, or your savings or your home, is to put an end to the excessive economic and political power of Wall Street by busting up the big banks.

The key to understanding the rise in inequality isn't technology or globalization. It's the power of the moneyed interests to shape the underlying rules of the market.

It's very hard to establish an economy of trustworthiness. The key is continuing to innovate and to keep your customers through innovation, because the customers can leave. But once you are a dominant player that continues to innovate and provide a good deal, customers will stay with you.

If you give up on politics, you're giving up on democracy. And if you give up on democracy, you're basically saying to the moneyed interests, the powerful people and institutions of society, take it all. That's a self-fulfilling prophecy. Then we give up. Then we are 100 percent plutocracy.

We reform the system. We save capitalism from its own excesses.