Pete Buttigieg

But for others, work can only be meaningful if its fundamental purpose is in things that would matter even if no one would pay you to care about them.

We have to recognize that the China challenge is a serious one. This is not something to dismiss or waive away. China is using technology for the perfection of dictatorship.

It is easier to be cruel, or unfair, to people in groups and in the abstract; harder to do so toward a specific person in your midst,

It now feels like an odd assurance to have had to make, since the attack happened hundreds of miles away, but that day it seemed as if we all had to check on each other for injury, as if anyone we cared about might have been harmed that morning just by being in the same world where this had happened.

A river is made drop by drop.

Iowa, you have shocked the nation.

We have to provide food and shelter for the homeless, and oppose racial discrimination and promote civil rights, while also promoting equal rights for women. We have to encourage a return to traditional moral values. Most importantly, we have to promote general social concern, and less materialism in young people.

To believe that your hopes of election depend on fewer people voting is to have a tragically weak level of trust in the value of your own positions, and your ability to defend them.

For purpose-driven people, this is the conundrum of client-service work: to perform at your best, you must learn how to care about something because you are hired to do so. For some, this is not a problem at all. A great lawyer or consultant can identify so closely with the client, or so strongly desire to be good at the job, or be so well compensated, that her purposes and interests and those of the client become one. But for others, work can only be meaningful if its fundamental purpose is in things that would matter even if no one would pay you to care about them.

I had a professional background in economic development and was fluent in the language of business - even while having fought and bled politically for organized labor in the auto industry.

The purpose of the presidency is not the glorification of the president. It is the unification of the American people.

On one hand, the right wing is replete with personalities who undermine everything they profess to stand for. Across the aisle, members of a Democratic party, aghast at the hypocrisy of their counterparts’ personalities, seem themselves reluctant to demonstrate any personality at all.

Our ability to trust in institutions and in one another — the ability to trust that we are subject to the same facts, even living in the same reality — is now endangered. A combination of causes has brought us to this point, a crisis of trust that has the potential to be paralyzing.

For those who remember if not mourn an epoch of lost greatness, it may be impossible to accept that there is no return. But for those of us who were raised only among its shards, and who grew up questioning if it was ever as great as advertised, embracing the permanence of change is the only thing that can liberate us to move forward.

They're going to keep focusing on which books to ban, and I'm focused on which bridges to build.