As Mayor, I will use my experience to make San Francisco a place where small businesses can thrive.

San Francisco businesses face many challenges, including high rents, regulatory burdens, and the rising cost of workers compensation insurance and employee health plans.

We need to allow people to bypass government... to look to themselves for solving problems rather than asking the government to do things for them.

Government doesn't have to come up with new killer features on its own. It has to step aside and let others come up with them.

Government can do best by simply getting out of the way.

Are we going to solve the issue of poverty? Absolutely not. Are we going to have an impact? I'm committed to it, and if we don't, I'll have no regrets because we're going to try everything we can.

We do not have the right to discriminate against people.

When you have a good idea, the money flows.

Society becomes how we behave.

You don't have to be something to do something.

President Trump is quick to attack American students, immigrants, women, the LGBT community, journalists, and our international allies but he is either too weak or too ignorant to stand up to white supremacists and others who spew hatred.

As goes California, so goes the rest of the nation.

Do I support a driver's license for everybody? The answer is yes.

I'm not courting labor. I come from a labor background. To me, it's just intuitive.

I'm much more optimistic about this next generation because this is the first global generation.

If you're trying to understand why it is that certain things happen in Sacramento and certain things don't, at the end of the day, it comes down to the issue of incentives: We do what we're incentivized to do.

I don't want to let the rest of this country drift into the abyss. I want to fight for it.

The tech genie is out of the bottle; you can't put it back in.

We have rules that no longer are relevant to the world we're living in. Our regulatory system can't keep up.

We are not going to turn our backs on people who have been persecuted, turn our backs on people who have been threatened by terror.

Guys like me don't necessarily progress very far, which is fine.

Founders Den provides the kind of collaborative and creative atmosphere to foster new ideas not only for emerging new businesses, but government as well.

The Republican Party - that was the end of the Republican Party. What Pete Wilson did with the xenophobia and the negative attitude, all this sort of anti-crime backlash.

Even if Donald Trump's successful, it's the beginning of the end if this rhetoric persists in the Republican Party.

The kind of cynical politics of divide and conquer, that's shameful stuff, and I don't know - people live their life like that, but I don't know how they look back and feel good about themselves.

I act on my principles, whether they're popular or not.

No-Drama Obama? Yeah, that's not me.

Do what you think is right, because one damn thing is an absolute, certainly: We come and go. Politicians are a dime a dozen.

If you distill the essence of everything, what life is about, every single one of us is given a short moment in time on this planet, and we all have one universal need and desire, and that is to be loved and to love. And to deny that for your own political expediency, I don't want to live in that column. It ain't worth it.

People always thought I'd never get elected outside San Francisco; I was always more worried that I'd never get elected again inside San Francisco.

You'd be hard pressed to find a bigger champion of high-speed rail than me when the bond went to voters. I believed in it.

Since Sandy Hook, I have sat back as a father and been mesmerized by the inability of the federal government to do anything substantively on gun safety.

Good people can disagree.

Separate is not equal. Civil unions are civil unions. Marriage is marriage. They're different institutions.

It was difficult to realize, 'I'm lieutenant governor.' And Brown appropriately reminded me of that.

The question for politicians here is fundamental: You can read the polls, or you can change the polls. Stand up on the things you believe in.

The economy is not immutable; it's not about natural laws. It's about rules, and we make the rules.

If, in this country, a simple majority of people can start stripping away the rights of a protected class in the minority, that's a pretty alarming thing.

Prop 8 did something that no other state in the history of this country has done. It took away the rights of people that already were legally affirmed. Imagine someone putting something on the ballot saying your wedding, your marriage is no longer valid.

Separate inherently is not equal. There's a reason why $45 million was spent against marriage equality. It's because people understand the word does have meaning. And equality comes when we accept the same notions and the same institutions for everyone, regardless of race and gender and regardless of sex orientation.

People don't have to agree with me. They can say, 'My gosh, I can't believe I'm listening to this guy. I can't disagree with him more.' But at least they know that I'm going to fight for things that I believe in. And I don't need to be in formal office to do that.

I really feel it's time to dissolve the current relationship of governor and lieutenant governor by running as a ticket.

I've never been a fan of pretense or procrastination. After all, our state is defined by its independent, outspoken spirit.

When Californians see something we truly believe in, we say so and act accordingly - without evasiveness or equivocation.

I will negotiate with my worst enemy.

If we continue to fight the National Rifle Association on their home court, which is the legislative front, I think we'll continue to be frustrated. But when you have an ability to go directly to the public, that's a completely different field of engagement, and I think the NRA is not adept at that kind of engagement.

A mistake that a lot of us have made, related to those who advocate for gun safety legislation, is that we try to process it through our legislative bodies, and that's where the NRA's strength lies.

There's been a gap between perception and reality, the perception being that California is on the cutting edge of gun safety legislation when, in fact, there are a number of areas where we have fallen behind.

At the end of the day, there's not a day that goes by without a mass shooting.

Even though he's a third-generation San Franciscan, my father's very European in some ways, and he loves wine.