The question to ask is not whether you are a success or a failure, but whether you are a learner or a nonlearner.

Jefferson thought schools would produce free men: we prove him right by putting dropouts in jail.

Having created the conditions that make markets possible, democracy must do all the things that markets undo or cannot do.

The real lesson of 9/11 that I think we have still to learn is that this is a world of interdependence, in which all of the challenges of environment and climate change, of jobs, of disease, of war and terrorism, are cross-border problems that cannot be met one nation at a time.

Consumer sales depend on the habits and behaviors of consumers, and those who manipulate consumer markets cannot but address behavior and attitude. That is presumably the object of the multibillion-dollar global advertising industry. Tea drinkers are improbable prospects for Coke sales.

I divide the world into learners and non-learners.

Injuries too well remembered cannot heal.

Civility is a work of the imagination, for it is through the imagination that we render others sufficiently like ourselves for them to become subjects of tolerance and respect, if not always affection.