“The White House has embarked on a mission to convince the people of our country that Social Security is in dire need of drastic change in order to save it for all workers”

I must be doing something right. I was raised to stand up to the bully in the schoolyard, and you don’t lose that.

If you dared to put your opinion into a factual piece, your editors said, “You can’t do this. Write an op-ed.”

President Bush in his inaugural address talked about bringing freedom to countries that don’t have it. He didn’t specify how.

When you take a stand out of deep conviction, people know. They may not even agree, but they ask, ‘Do I want someone who is willing to take a hard stand and someone I can trust to do that when the chips are down?’ They want that.

We have the greatest hospitals, doctors, and medical technology in the world – we need to make them accessible to every American.

Medical professionals, not insurance company bureaucrats, should be making health care decisions.

So when you go up against the Far Right you go up against the big financial special interests like the Halliburtons of the world, the big oil companies, the big energy companies who work so hard to rip us off.

Our democracy is the centerpiece of who we are as a nation. And it is the fondest hope of all Americans that we can help bring democracy to every corner of the world.

Some people play golf. Some are artists, Some jog. I like to write.

When service members are discharged, we should express our gratitude for their profound personal sacrifice, not hand them a bill for their hospital food.

The press is critical at this time, and if you look at history, this is so critical.

I think being prepared for anything is the way to go.

I’ve always thought the most patriotic thing you could do in a democracy is to speak the truth as you see it. And that’s what we’re supposed to be about in America. Freedom of speech.

We have to treasure our country, our freedom, the progress we’ve made, and if we see any of that threatened, we have to respond.

The American people need to know the truth. The American people need to see the truth. In a democracy, letting the people know the truth is the essence of what it means to be free.

The Violence Against Women Act protects the lives of tens of thousands of domestic violence victims. But the U.S. must also support gender equality around the world, and that means acknowledging that some nations we consider to be our friends are no friends to women.

We now have a president who tries to save money by turning off lights in the White House, even as he heads toward a staggering addition to the national debt. “L.B.J.” should stand for Light Bulb Johnson.

I used to do this big rant at the end of some gigs with Ben Folds Five. The band broke into this big heavy metal thing and I started as a joke to scream in a heavy metal falsetto. I found myself saying things like: Feel my pain, I am white, feel my pain.

We like things to be black or white, tall or short, here or there.

I think it is very ironic that most people think that the banjo is a southern white instrument. It came from Africa and even for the first years that white people played banjo they would put on blackface.

in our culture, the professional, and largely white, middle class is taken as a social norm – a bland and neutral mainstream – from which every other group or class is ultimately a kind of deviation.

Nothing is all good or all bad, nothing is black or white, everything is just messy and human and difficult.

For just once in my life, I’d like to get through a whole week without having to deal with some fool, white or black, who’s got an attitude about the way I look.

The white people have no right to take the land from the Indians, because the Indians had it first.