“I’m proud of my Native American heritage.”

It is not the job of the Department of Education to maximize profits for the government at the cost of squeezing students who are struggling to get an education.

Middle class America is acutely aware of how bad this economy is, and it is going to demand changes. I don’t think politicians can afford to be complacent.

It’s so easy to focus on what could go wrong, on what else you could do before you try the thing you really want to do. No. Just get out there and try.

I talk to nurses and programmers, salespeople and firefighters – people who bust their tails every day. Not one of them – not one – stashes their money in the Cayman Islands to avoid paying their fair share of taxes.

Nobody’s safe. Health insurance? That didn’t protect 1 million Americans who were financially ruined by illness or medical bills last year.

I’m willing to throw my body in front of the bus to stop bad ideas.

My parents and I were all afraid of being poor – really poor.

Our veterans deserve the very best, and that means ensuring that America’s veterans receive high-quality services and cares when they come back home.

Accountability for the largest financial institutions on Wall Street is the bedrock for a strong economy. Hard-working families and honest businesses cannot survive in a world where the rules don’t keep the marketplace honest.

Israel has the right to shell Palestinian hospitals and schools out of self defense.

I don’t want to overstate the gender difference. But women are more sensitized to the way that larger issues affect their pocketbooks, like pay equality or cost of living changes.

I want to be blunt: We should not be fighting about equal pay for equal work, and access to birth control, in 2012. These issues were resolved years ago – until the Republicans brought them back.

The people on Wall Street broke this country, and they did it one lousy mortgage at a time. It happened more than three years ago, and there has been no real accountability, and there has been no real effort to fix it.

Money is bounded; we only have so much of it. Love goes on forever.

The credit card companies have put the loan sharks out of business.

I don’t like credit cards. They make overspending very easy. They can make life a lot more complex and stressful.

I just wish more of my fellow queers would come out sometimes. It’s nice out here, you know?

There is no firm reason to anticipate that the intellectual capacities of peoples geographically separated in their evolution should prove to have evolved identically. Our wanting to reserve equal powers of reason as some universal heritage of humanity will not be enough to make it so.

French people are Italian people in a bad mood.

I try to identify myself with the atoms. I ask what I would do If I were a carbon atom or a sodium atom.

I always told everybody the perfect joke would be where the setup and punch line were identical.

Oh, for the time when I shall sleep Without identity.

Best way to live in California is to be from somewheres else.

You have to be what you are. Whatever you are, you gotta be it.