I have many sources of inspiration. I'd have to point to Dr. Martin Luther King, first and foremost. But my parents were good, hardworking folks who kept us in the church and the public schools, and out of trouble, for the most part.

It's become fashionable to put down people who we then expect to vote for us.

For me, I think that the struggle around how to deal with Islam in the United States is the defining moral struggle of this half of the new century.

Let me say what I actually believe. I believe that 9/11 was a conspiracy, by Al Qaeda, and Osama Bin Laden, and nobody else, trying to hurt America.

Well, we in America are about to break up with oil. Why not break up with poverty and discrimination too?

It's a tremendous challenge now: to make sure the green economy is big enough that there is enough labor demand that people who've been thrown out of work can be re-employed AND people who are new to the workforce can be employed. And that is going to be very difficult.

You had a socialist get 47 percent of the votes in the Democratic primary: Bernie Sanders. You have an outright white nationalist populist [Donald Trump] who is now in the White House with an authoritarian strongman who has no regard for facts, no regard for tradition, and no regard for the Constitution. That is what you get when you import third world conditions. You get third world politics, and that's where we are now.