All one needs to do is just to go to any hospital in America and see the number of Pakistani or Indian or Lebanese, or Syrian, or Egyptian doctors, who are either first generation or themselves immigrants, to know, and I'm a big believer - brains are distributed evenly around the world. What aren't distributed evenly are opportunities, stable government, educational institutions, etc.

When people get frustrated, it's when they feel they are living in a context that deprives them of dignity, deprives them of justice and deprives them of the freedom to realize their full potential, and that to me is what the Arab awakening was all about. I think it applied to every country, and so I have been an unmitigated supporter of it.

I think there are different kinds of elites. I think there are venal elites, and self-interested elites, and selfish elites, and I think there are visionary elites.

Hope and optimism aren't just attitudes, they are life strategies.

A generation ago [the Democratic Party] stood for progressive change. Now they defend every federal program as if each were sacred. They have become the most conservative force in American politics.

Two things are going on at the same time with the flattening of the world: The relentless quest for efficiency is squeezing some of the fat out of life.

America needs rebooting.