If you live long enough, you'll make mistakes. But if you learn from them, you'll be a better person. It's how you handle adversity, not how it affects you. The main thing is never quit, never quit, never quit.

It is time to stop personal destruction and prying into private lives

The established order has too many self-protecting economic entities, and not enough people who yet understand what it takes to change.

You can't blame the administration and the Republicans for taking us back to deficits, for spending the Social Security surplus and assaulting the environment. That's what they promised to do in the last election.

This is a huge problem. If we don't deal with this within just a few years, you will have island nations flooded; you will have the agricultural balance of most countries completely changed; you will have a dramatic increase in the number of severe, unmanageable weather events... And the good news is that we can now deal with this problem - and strengthen our economic growth, not weaken it.

So we, Democrats, have a responsibility there, every one of us, both to try to treat the Republicans with respect and as human beings to try to work with them on every issue we can, and then if those cannons are fired at us, we've got to stand up and fight back. If you lay down and you look like a deer caught in the headlights, then you will confirm the assault. And so we have to fight back.

We can't afford to lose control of our own borders or to take on new financial burdens at a time when we are not adequately providing for the jobs, the health care and the education of our own people.