“It is to believe in the perverseness of the universe, that even if I do well, something I don’t know about will get in the way, sabotage me, or get me in the end.”

We are all capable of change and growth; we just need to know where to begin.

Courage is holding on one minute longer than everyone else. Courage is stepping forward when every fiber of your being says step back.

No matter where you are in life . . . [y]ou always have a choice and the choice can be power.

When we doubt, our self-talk sounds like this: ‘I don’t think I can. I don’t think I will.’… To doubt is to have faith in the worst possible outcome.

Both parties make decisions and choices based on what is right, what is best, what is valued most highly.

Courage is being willing to do the impossible because it is the right thing to do.

Whose leadership, whose judgment, whose values do you want in the White House when that crisis lands like a thud on the Oval Office desk?

You never let a serious crisis go to waste. And what I mean by that it’s an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before.

There was no blueprint or how-to manual for fixing a global financial meltdown, an auto crisis, two wars and a great recession, all at the same time.

The completely solitary self: that’s where poetry comes from, and it gets isolated by crisis, and those crises are often very intimate also.

What happened in the missile crisis in October 1962 has been prettified to make it look as if acts of courage and thoughtfulness abounded.

It’s just very hard to teach a class of students about what has happened in the Global Financial Crisis.

Institutions of the newer participants in global finance had not been tested, until recently…recent crisis have underscored certain financial structure vulnerabilities that are not readily assuaged in the short run.

This is not a time to quail, it is not a crisis, nor should we see it as an excuse for wobbling or self-doubt. But it is a moment for hope.