A politics that is not sensitive to the concerns and circumstances of people's lives, a politics that does not speak to and include people, is an intellectually arrogant politics that deserves to fail.
Above and beyond the question of how to grow the economy there is a legitimate concern about how to grow the quality of our lives.
As free citizens in a political democracy, we have a responsibility to be interested and involved in the affairs of the human community, be it at the local or the global level.
Education and democracy have the same goal: the fullest possible development of human capabilities.
I don't think politics has anything to do with left, right, or center. It has to do with trying to do right by people.
I emphasize self-esteem, self-confidence, and dignity, not as an ideal, but as a real test of community organization. Without leadership development, community organizations do not have staying power.
I have a strong body, I have a strong heart, I have a strong soul.
I represent the Democratic wing of the Democratic party.
I saw as a teacher how, if you take that spark of learning that those children have, and you ignite it, you can take a child from any background to a lifetime of creativity and accomplishment.
I think the future also will not belong to those who are cynical or those who stand on the sidelines.
I think the prophetic tradition of our faith is that to love God is to love justice.
I was talking about no nukes, the farm crisis. People said that wasn't stuff that a state auditor was supposed to be talking about. Maybe they were right.
I'm not making a decision I don't believe in.
I'm short, I'm Jewish and I'm a liberal.
If a teacher does not involve himself, his values, his commitments, in the course of discussion, why should the students?
If we don't fight hard enough for the things we stand for, at some point we have to recognize that we don't really stand for them.
It is the belief that extremes and excesses of inequality must be reduced so that each person is free to fully develop his or her full potential. This is why we take precious time out of our lives and give it to politics.
Never separate the life you live from the words you speak.
Organizers need to be careful and make a rigorous analysis of just what people are capable of doing.
Our aims in political activism are not, and should not be, to create a perfect utopia.
Our politics are our deepest form of expression: they mirror our past experiences and reflect our dreams and aspirations for the future.
People have to hear words that not only sound right but feel right.
Politics is about the improvement of people's lives. It's about advancing the cause of peace and justice in our country and the world. Politics is about doing well for the people.
Politics is not about money.
Politics is not about power.
Politics is not about winning for the sake of winning.
Politics is not predictions and politics is not observations. Politics is what we do. Politics is what we do, politics is what we create, by what we work for, by what we hope for and what we dare to imagine.
Politics isn't about big money or power games; it's about the improvement of people's lives.
Right now the whole does not equal the sum of the parts.
Sometimes, the only realists are the dreamers.
Successful organizing is based on the recognition that people get organized because they, too, have a vision.
The American polity is infected with a serious imbalance of power between elites and masses, a power which is the principal threat to our democracy.
The first task in teaching is to bring to consciousness what the students already believe by virtue of their personal experiences about themselves and society.
The future will belong to those who have passion and are willing to work hard to make our country better.
The idea of democracy has been stripped of it moral imperatives and come to denote hollowness and hypocrisy.
The kind of national goal we ought to be thinking about is way beyond national product - it is how do we as a nation help our children be the best kinds of people they could possibly be?
The only way to change is to vote. People are responsible.
The people of this country, not special interest big money, should be the source of all political power.
The problem with party politics is that people get involved every two or four years and that is it. In the meantime, the legislature and Minnesota politics are on a separate track.
There are three critical ingredients to democratic renewal and progressive change in America: good public policy, grassroots organizing and electoral politics.
There is a major ingredient missing from our perception of how changes are brought about; that ingredient is power.
Victories should be won by people where they live, but if the victories never affect national or international centers of decision-making power, then we are still not seriously contesting for power.
We can and must move U.S. politics forward by means of committed participation.
We can remake the world daily.
We must regain our vision and hope and move our country forward on an agenda of peace and justice.
We must remember that for many, many women, work does not represent liberation, modernization, or market success. Most women are not upper income professionals and certainly not executives of large corporations and banks; most women work in the expanding low-wage service sector of our economy.
We need a new kind of citizenship, so that we can see citizens as themselves earning the rank of patriot because of their involvement in their community affairs... .We as a society need to be encouraging people to focus not just on individual wants but on serving the larger community.
What makes community organizing especially attractive is the faith it places in the ability of the poor to make decisions for themselves.
What the poor, the weak, and the inarticulate desperately require is power, organization, and a sense of identity and purpose, not rarefied advice of political scientists.
What we seek is more simply to improve the quality of human life while at the same time respecting the natural environment which sustains it.
When too many Americans don't vote or participate, some see apathy and despair. I see disappointment and even outrage. And I believe that out of this frustration can come hope and action.
Why don't we call on the credit card companies to be accountable? They need to be held accountable for their predatory lending practices.
Without trying, I'm different.
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