I think of myself as a democratic capitalist, although I think the word 'socialism' loses its meaning every time that it is used to describe literally any policy left of far right by the current Republicans.

I don't know how it plays in San Francisco. But I can tell you I came out, during a reelection campaign, in Indiana, while Mike Pence was the governor. And I wound up winning reelection by 80 percent.

The challenge in confronting Trump is that there are certain things that he does that that you have to respond to, just morally. When he lies, you've got to correct the lie, which will keep you busy because he does it so often. When he does something wrong, you've got to point to it.

I'm proud of who I am. I am proud of my husband and our marriage.

I was well into adulthood before I was prepared to acknowledge the simple fact that I am gay. It took years of struggle and growth for me to recognize that it's just a fact of life, like having brown hair, and part of who I am.

In my generation, thankfully, as somebody who served in the Afghanistan War, would have served in the Iraq War, if called to do so - was also strongly against the Iraq War, from the beginning - I'm so thankful that we live in a moment that we can honor the troops separately from policy.

My marriage to Chasten has made me a better man.

The old line of thought used to be that local government is the bush leagues.

When people are economically or socially dislocated, they are always more vulnerable to being radicalized.

The greatest nation in the world should not have much to fear from a family, especially children, fleeing violence. More importantly, children fleeing violence ought to have nothing to fear from the greatest country in the world.

The background of a mayor of a city of any size is a background of somebody who on one hand is an executive and on the other hand is very close to the ground.

Being attentive to the things that add meaning to our lives alongside politics will help us inform our politics with the values that really do make America great.

The force that has come closest across American history to actually ending America was white supremacy. That was the Civil War.

Tearing apart a community, a business, and a family will make America worse off, every time.

When you become a citizen, you are an American and questioning somebody's Americanness because they disagree with you - is about one of the most un-American things I can think of.

You know, I do believe that China is emerging as a competitor, not just a competitor but, in many ways, an adversary. And, you know, the Chinese model is also being held up globally as an alternative power model, and I very much believe in our model versus theirs.

It's time to join the ranks of nations that have put the ugliness of capital punishment behind them.

You could be a senior senator and have never managed more than a hundred people in your life.

By high school, I had traded my oversized, thick glasses for contact lenses, but my eyesight was getting worse every year, smothering my childhood aspiration of becoming an astronaut or, at least, a pilot.

Those of us who work in politics can only make ourselves useful if our heads are filled with things that we can contribute to the political space.

On this National Immigration Day of Action, it is worth remembering that it's not just Americans in New York or Los Angeles who believe that we need a more humane and rational system.

Wall-to-wall coverage of the political intrigue in Washington focuses on which Capitol Hill players won the daily news cycle, with barely any reference to the communities and lives where politicians' decisions actually hit home.

There's a lot to be said for expanding the Earned Income Tax Credit.

We need to consider a financial transactions tax. And we need to ask whether the top marginal tax rates are really appropriate, given that the effective tax rates paid by the wealthy are often actually lower than those paid by the rest of us.

My voting rights agenda is not that different from what you'd see in H.R. 1.

I have not reached a considered position on the question of court-packing. Although I don't think we should be laughing at it.

You're not free if you can't sue a financial institution that gets caught ripping you off.

Things are changing tectonically in our country, and we can't just keep doing what we've been doing.

The first news event I understood as a small child was the loss of the space shuttle Challenger, which President Reagan eloquently mourned from the Oval that evening.

My high school in South Bend had nearly a thousand students. Statistically, that means that several dozen were gay or lesbian. Yet, when I graduated in 2000, I had yet to encounter a single openly LGBT student there.

I've never believed in running for office so you can eventually run for some other office.

When I was fourteen, Mom and Dad sent me to St. Joseph High School, the Catholic school up the hill from our place, housed in a 1950s-era tan brick building sometimes confused for a light industrial structure due to the surprisingly high smokestack of its old incinerator.

'Palaces for the People' reads more like a succession of case studies than a comprehensive account of what social infrastructure is, so those looking for a theoretical framework may be disappointed.

I've always been terrible at land navigation.

Donald Trump got elected because, in his twisted way, he pointed out the huge troubles in our economy and our democracy.

Experiences with friends or family members coming out have helped millions of Americans to see past stereotypes and better understand what being gay is - and is not.

The decision to serve needs to be independent of your politics.

The most moving responses I got to my coming out in the first place was people, like teenagers, letting me know that it made their lives easier in some way.

People in communities like Granger, Indiana, are rarely heard from on cable networks. But they, too, believe it is wrong to deport friends and neighbors who do no harm and much good.

If somebody is saying that I should not compete because I'm a man, I don't know what to say to that. And if somebody is saying that I had it easy, I would invite them to join the military and enter Indiana politics in 2010 as a gay person. See how easy they find it.

Mayors love lists when they say something good about their city and hate them when they don't.

I think people in our party tie themselves up in pretzels trying to be more electable.

We've never been a party to obstruct for obstruction sake.

I think a lot about intergenerational justice. Short-term versus long-term helps to explain a lot of the policy disagreements that happen between the parties, and I would argue that in most ways, we are the party with more long-term thinking.

Most people have trouble pronouncing my name, so they just call me 'Mayor Pete.'

I kept up top grades, and by senior year, a flow of mailed college recruiting brochures accumulated into an avalanche on our dining room table.

You're not free if you can't start a small business because you fear losing your health care, and you're certainly not free if a male boss or politician prevents you from making decisions about your own reproductive health.

If somebody is pointing out that there are advantages - many of them unfair - that go along with being male in our society and in our politics, then I completely agree.

That really important freedom in my life, the freedom to marry, came about because of choices that were made by policymakers who had power over me and millions of others.

Let's be under no illusions: There are attacks on, for example, transgender Americans from the Oval Office, picking on troops - people willing to lay down their lives for this country - not to mention teenagers in our high schools. So we've got to end the war on trans Americans.