"The Declaration of Independence was always our vision of who we wanted to be, our ideal of freedom and justice, how we were going to be different, and what the American experiment was going to be about."

"If we don't stand up for children, then we don't stand for much."

"There should not be one new dime in tax breaks for millionaires and billionaires as long as millions of children in America are poor, hungry, uneducated and without health coverage."

"A lot of people are waiting for Martin Luther King or Mahatma Gandhi to come back - but they are gone. We are it. It is up to us. It is up to you."

"It's sometimes said that I'm rebellious and I do things to push people's buttons, but I just like the challenge."

"We are so obsessed with doing that we have no time and no imagination left for being. As a result, men are valued not for what they are but for what they do or what they have - for their usefulness."

"To speak the truth in a season of deceit is an act of supreme bravery."

"It does not matter how slowly you go as long as you do not stop."