“My response [to fear of being poor]was to study contracts, finance, economics, to plan, to have a goal, to work on that goal. To learn everything I could. I always poked at the things that scared me most.”

The people who are filing for bankruptcy in increasing numbers every year, it’s not the poorest. It’s not the people at the economic fringes. It’s people who worked hard and played by the rules.

If there’s any lesson I’ve learned in the last five years, it’s don’t be so sure about what lies ahead. There are amazing doors that could open.

We’re Americans. We celebrate success. We just don’t want the game to be rigged.

It’s better to fight because if you don’t fight, you can’t win. Besides, even when you don’t win, you can change the game.

I’m really concerned that ‘too big to fail’ has become ‘too big for trial’.

It’s a simple idea: We all do better when we work together and invest in our future.

I have a daughter and I have granddaughters and I will never vote to let a group of backward-looking ideologues cut women’s access to birth control. We have lived in that world, and we are not going back, not ever.

People feel like the system is rigged against them, and here is the painful part, they’re right. The system is rigged.

We don’t win what we don’t fight for.

College students today are drowning in debt, and it is hurting them and hurting our economy. We must find a way to help families pay for college without condemning them to a lifetime of indebtedness.

That’s how we build the economy of the future. An economy with more jobs and less debt, we root it in fairness. We grow it with opportunity. And we build it together.

We need to remind politicians they don’t work for the big banks – they work for us.

The need for comprehensive reform must not blind us to the urgency of addressing the massive debt that’s already crushing our young people.

Balancing your money is the key to having enough.

We should be talking about expanding Social Security benefits – not cutting them.

Pundits talk about ‘populist rage’ as a way to trivialize the anger and fear coursing through the middle class.

Even in a righteous cause force is a fearful thing.

The man who fears nothing is as powerful as he who is feared by everybody.

It is a base thing for a man among the people not to obey those in command. Never in a state can the laws be well administered when fear does not stand firm.

Live up to your convictions. You walk in grace or you walk in fear. You can’t have it both ways.

I have irrational fears, and they all go back to losing my father as a kid. I’ve never gotten over it.

All religions are founded on the fear of the many and the cleverness of the few.

I’m still terrified of flying. I really have to get drunk to fly. I’ve found that I’ve developed fears I never had before… fears of heights, claustrophobia only in cities, though, never in the country.

I was walking around trying to act cool, like I had no fear at all. But I was afraid, afraid that somebody would find out just how scared I was. Now I’m finally realizing that fear is the opposite of love.