“When community action was put into federal law in the early sixties as part of the effort to combat poverty and social injustice, I supported it intellectually.”

Take free speech: most of the tough cases on free speech involve very unpleasant people saying very obnoxious things.

Most people who are activists and are concerned about issues get their information from sources which reinforce their opinions and give them the facts that they want to hear.

We all have the right to call each other names. Rudeness is a deeply held constitutional value.

Ridicule is about the most powerful weapon possible.

I’m used to being in the minority. I’m a left-handed, gay Jew. I’ve never felt, automatically, a member of any majority.

The single most important thing you can do politically for gay rights is to come out. Not to write a letter to your congressman but to come out.

The Moral Majority supports legislators who oppose abortions but also oppose child nutrition and day care. From their perspective, life begins at conception and ends at birth.

But when others suggested that the poor should not simply be the objects of these programs but also the subjects – that they should be actively involved in shaping the programs, making decisions about how to spend the money etc. – some of the previous supporters reconsidered.

They appear to have become so attached to their outrage that they are even more outraged that they won’t be able to be outraged anymore.

If people knew of ethics violations, they should have sent them to the Ethics Committee. If you think there was serious ethics violation that ought to be looked at, you don’t hold it back for retaliatory purposes.

There was a degree of interventionism in American foreign policy, the notion that we must be the superpower and we have to intervene everywhere, that I think makes no sense.

The public is ready now for a safety net for the middle class, something not just for the poor, but for everyone who will need help, from time to time, in order to own a home, educate their kids, keep themselves healthy or have something to retire on.

Going before an audience of people who expect you to be funny is tough. Going before an audience that expect you to be boring, and then being a little funny, is much easier. I prefer easier.

People are entitled to the presumption of innocence.

For most of my life, I have eaten to deal with stress.

There were a lot of Romneys. There’s the Romney who was going to be better on gay rights than Ted Kennedy; now there’s a Romney who checks with Rick Santorum on that issue.

Instead of drifting along like a leaf in a river, understand who you are and how you come across to people and what kind of an impact you have on the people around you and the community around you and the world, so that when you go out, you can feel you have made a positive difference.

I’m for Barack Obama. We gotta have the Muslim cell in there just to piss Rush Limbaugh and the right wing off.

A lot of that we see today, where the Muslims are against the Christians and the Christians are against Jews and the Jews are against Arabs – I mean, it just it goes on and on and on.

In my experience, in the real-estate business past success stories are generally not applicable to new situations.

We intend to conduct our business in a way that not only meets but exceeds the expectations of our customers, business partners, shareholders, and creditors, as well as the communities in which we operate and society at large.

If anybody reads an Indian newspaper, all these things are obvious, and so I am not breaking news. All I am doing is representing my community as it actually is.

Also, I have to assume that readers are sophisticated enough to know that not every person in a community is the same, and so there are many people who would not force an abortion just because a fetus is female.

For me, I never ever felt the ownership or any identity with any community of disabilities. I didn’t grow up being told that I was a disabled child.