The steady expansion of welfare programs can be taken as a measure of the steady disintegration of the Negro family structure over the past generation in the United States.

The principal challenge of the next phase of the Negro revolution is to make certain that equality of results will now follow. If we do not, there will be no social peace in the United States for generations.

The central conservative truth is that it is culture, not politics, that determines the success of a society. The central liberal truth is that politics can change a culture and save it from itself.

The single most exciting thing you encounter in government is competence, because it's so rare.

The Democrats have prevailed because, at heart, we have embodied a great idea, which is that an elected government can be the instrument of the common purpose of a free people; that government can embrace great causes and do great things.

I was in charge of the Bureau of Labor Statistics. So I had some of the most brilliant mathematical statistical minds in the country, who would put together the modern technology, if you like, of understanding the economy and tracking it and trying to influence it.

The great corporations of this country were not founded by ordinary people. They were founded by people with extraordinary intelligence, ambition, and aggressiveness.