To be clear, the gap between the have gots and the have nots is widening. In this most multicultural, multiracial, multiethnic America ever, that concerns me.

[John Carlos] has spent much of his life since that time as a dedicated human rights advocate and public speaker, and he is out now with a wonderful new text; a memoir, in fact.

I'm talking about France and Germany and Italy and Spain - new friend Germany - and I love that story, how they lead the world in some things that the world needs leadership in. Amongst them we're the only ones without national healthcare. Can't go to a hospital and not worry about falling into bankruptcy. They go to university free. We're killing our students with debt. That scares me.

If you don't have courage, you can't practice any of the other virtues.

It's hard these days to have a conversation, at least it is for me, about [Truman]Capote without "Good Night, and Good Luck" coming up in the same conversation.

This is not a skill problem, this is a will problem. Does America have the will to make education a priority? We know the things that work. Why don't we scale up those things that do work.

This whole notion of a post racial America was nonsense from the very beginning. It was a bad idea, a bad notion, a bad formulation when it was first raised.