As unacceptable as this problem is -- I know we can fix it. In San Francisco, we threatened the parents of truants with prosecution, and truancy drop… - Kamala Harris

I've learned, through history and experience, that not all progress is gradual or linear. Sometimes it simply goes from one plateau to another. Sometimes we fall back tragically. Sometimes we leap forward and achieve things beyond the realm of what we thought possible. I believe that our job is to provide the force propulsion that will get us to a higher plane.

My mother, she raised my sister Maya and me, and she was tough, our mother was all of 5 feet tall, but if you ever met her, you would've thought she was 10 feet tall.

The point of being a public official is to find solutions to problems, especially the most intractable, and to have a vision for the future. ... You have to be willing to test your hypothesis and find out if your solution works, based on metrics and data. Blind adherence to tradition should not be the measure of success.