“I am deeply skeptical of trade deals in general.But the only way they can get a number of Democrats is by doing a strong real currency bill that goes after the worst of the trading partners, the one that`s stealing our high-end jobs.”

People are angry and dispirited about government because of a failure to do something about crime.

Let me say this, to all of the chattering class that so much focuses on those little tiny, yes, porky amendments – the American people really don’t care.

I don’t think we should be putting first-time drug offenders in jail for five years. It’s a waste of resources.

But these days there are a lot of younger people who would like to go into teaching but don’t because the economic opportunities are sometimes elsewhere.

If we are going to stay a great power and I hope and pray we will we need the truth. We need to know what is going right and we need to know what is going wrong. There is no greater time than now.

This is government’s primary function – to keep us safe – and when large percentages in America don’t feel safe, they start asking: What am I paying my taxes for? What is government all about?

There are many reasons why Mitt Romney should not become president, but perhaps the most important of all is the narrowness of his experience, perspective and vision.

Crime can be a unifying argument – not an argument that people use as a code for us vs. them.

I’m strongly for a patient Bill of Rights. Decisions ought to be made by doctors, not accountants.

I think teaching should be an exalted profession, not a picked-on profession.

Inaction is perhaps the greatest mistake of all.

The public knows how many good things there are as part of the Affordable Care Act. The Republicans say they’re going to repeal. They don’t know what to replace it with.

I support the death penalty for the kingpin, the guy at the top, but I don’t think you should throw a drug offender in jail for five years, and let a mugger out after a year.

Giving up even an ounce of precious freedom is a very serious thing to do.

You do have to change things as warfare changes.

Certainly any president – Democrat, Republican, liberal, conservative – should keep an open mind until they get the briefing.

I’m always up for collaborating with brands and people who actually design, but doing your own line is a whole other beast. I don’t think I could deal with the criticism.

In ordinary life we hardly realize that we receive a great deal more than we give, and that it is only with gratitude that life becomes rich.

All of my books deal in a very rough, rude fashion with subjects about which there are great conflicts of opinion.

Laughter gives us distance. It allows us to step back from an event, deal with it and then move on.

A leader is a dealer in hope.

I admire men of character and I judge character not by how men deal with their superiors, but mostly how they deal with their subordinates. And that, to me, is where you find out what the character of a man is.

If you have character, that means the guy you are dealing with can trust you.

Anyone can deal with victory. Only the mighty can bear defeat.