"I hated discussing ideas with investors,' he said, 'because I then become a Defender of the Idea, and that influences your thought process.' Once you became an idea's defender you had a harder time changing your mind about it."

"By defining the problem as 'hunger,' the emergency food system is helping to direct our attention away from the more fundamental problem of poverty, and the even more basic problem of inequality."

"1. Do what you say you're gonna do 2. Show up! 3. Give genuine praise whenever you can 4. Never say sorry when you don't mean it 5. Never use sarcasm in email (and use the corny ass emoticons)."

"If adolescent pregnancy prevention is to become a priority, then our strategy, as advocates, must contain two key elements: civic engagement and education."

"Information is a source of learning. But unless it is organized, processed, and available to the right people in a format for decision making, it is a burden, not a benefit."

"Art is the business of selling fetishes, sacred relics once touched by genius: what the forger offers the gullible buyer is not art, it is 'authenticity."

"I got to get the right people in the right job. Because a lot of costs can be taken out in the context of your administration without the legislature. For example, using technology to do more with less. Using technology to fight fraud. Reorganizing and streamlining can be done within the context of the administration."

"If we don't learn from each others experience, we are forced to listen to people who have economic reasons to withhold critical information from us all. The other option is to wait for the government to tell us what their financial supporters want us to know."