"My mother taught public school, went to Harvard and then got her master's there and taught fifth and sixth grade in a public school. My dad had a more working-class lifestyle. He didn't go to college. He was an auto mechanic and a bartender and a janitor at Harvard."

"I'm always described as 'cocksure' or 'with a swagger,' and that bears no resemblance to who I feel like inside. I feel plagued by insecurity."

"I have a good relationship with the world. But I don't know what the trick is to maintaining it."

"There's something really great and romantic about being poor and sleeping on couches."

"The highest result of education is tolerance."

"It is a unyielding truth that experience is the stern teacher that gives the examination before the lesson — an essential principle for the reflective life."

"Religiosity turns out to be the best indicator of civic involvement: it's more accurate than education, age, income, gender or race."

"I started to make a study of the art of war and revolution and, whilst abroad, underwent a course in military training. If there was to be guerrilla warfare, I wanted to be able to stand and fight with my people and to share the hazards of war with them."