Capitalism makes people unequally rich. Communism makes people equally poor.

I think we have lost our groove as a country. One of the reasons was the attack on 9/11. We got knocked off our game. From a country that always exported hope we went into the business of exporting fear.

Pessimists are usually right and optimists are usually wrong but all the great changes have been accomplished by optimists.

America was the funder of petro-dictatorships. We treated all these countries as basically big, large gas stations: Libya station, Iraq station, Iran station, Egypt station, Syria station, and all we asked of them were three things: Keep your palms open, your prices low and don't bother Israel too much, and you can do whatever you want to your own people.

We have to fight the terrorists as if there were no rules and preserve our open society as if there were no terrorists.

We have to be the best global citizens we can be.

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.