The truth is that ideas matter... If we really want to repair what is wrong in our society, it is going to require not just new policies or even new behaviors, but nothing less heroic than new ideas.
As president, I will bring all the parties and stakeholders together. I am going to come up with a solution that respects the environment and does not cause an upheaval in the economy.
We live in an interconnected world, in an interconnected time, and we need holistic solutions. We have a crisis of inequality, and we need climate solutions that solve that crisis.
I don't think it's my job, single-handedly, to fix anything. I think it's my job to have a vision and have a plan that is reasonable and workable and get as many people to the table to effect change as possible.
Our nation has endured and flourished because people of goodwill adapt and innovate productive solutions to our nation's problems - not because of top-down dictates.
Global challenges require collective responses.
It is my earnest hope that all parties across the political spectrum will bear Hong Kong's long-term interests in mind, apply their political wisdom, and seek a consensus through open and rational communication with people of different views.
Let's not dismiss or attack individual ideas as being inadequate before we have had a chance to assess their positive effect as part of a whole solution.
Big, expensive government is not the answer for people without disabilities, nor is it for those with.
You can't marginalize more than half of the globe's population and expect to see any meaningful solutions to the problems that ail the world.
Being attentive to inequality and not tone deaf to it. But offering prescriptions that are actually going to help folks in communities that feel forgotten. That's going to be our most important strategy. And I think we can successfully do that.
Simple black-and-white thinking or action is always going to be problematic.
Leaders need to compromise, negotiate with members of both parties and ideologies, and reform health care the right way - by developing a strong plan that encompasses the needs of all Americans.
Design, if it is to be ecologically responsible and socially responsive, must be revolutionary and radical.
If people long to create a better world, then we must use our platform to nurture imagination - hopeful ideas, fresh alternatives, belief that the way things are isn't the way things need to be.
The debate that I'm interested in having is with seriously smart people about how we design institutions in the 21st century that will genuinely address problems of poverty and educational underachievement.
We must reinvent a future free of blinders so that we can choose from real options.
You get more diversity and creativity in your problem solving, and you end up having a much better and more representative approach to solving the challenges faced by the population you serve.
Now is the time for Afro-realism: for sound policies based on honest data, aimed at delivering results.
