Socialism for rich bankers and capitalism for everyone else.

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.

You have to keep a sense of humor about yourself, more than anything else. You've got to take the issues very seriously, but you can't take yourself too seriously. And Washington is a city in which everybody takes themselves extraordinarily seriously.

Our moral authority is as important, if not more important, than our troop strength or our high-tech weapons. We are rapidly losing that moral authority, not only in the Arab world but all over the world.

Cutting taxes is not bad. But if you cut taxes on the wealthy, which is what they wanted to do, you're not helping people who need better schools and better infrastructure and healthcare. You're basically robbing the middle class and the poor to provide tax cuts to the rich.

I was there in Washington in the `90s. It was pretty bad then. It`s much worse now [in 2015]. And that vicious cycle is you`ve got again big corporations, executives, Wall Street, very wealthy individuals in both parties who are calling the shots.

Cynicism is the last refuge of those who don't want to do the work of creating a better society.