Words matter. These are the best Pete Buttigieg Quotes, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.
My voting rights agenda is not that different from what you’d see in H.R. 1.
‘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 hope that teachings about inclusion and love win out over what I personally consider to be a handful of scriptures that reflect the moral expectations of the era in which they were recorded.
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.
In local government, it’s very clear to your customers – your citizens – whether or not you’re delivering. Either that pothole gets filled in, or it doesn’t. The results are very much on display, and that creates a very healthy pressure to innovate.
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.
A message is something that makes sense no matter who you’re running against.
I am not skilled enough or energetic enough to craft a persona. I just have to be who I am and hope people like it.
I don’t have to go on a tour to find out what’s happening in middle America. I just go to Target.
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.
Mayors love lists when they say something good about their city and hate them when they don’t.
You can’t understand America without understanding the Puritans. In many ways, we’re still living out their legacy in ways that are good and bad.
I think most Americans understand that we deserve to have universal health care, as enjoyed by most citizens in most developed countries.
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.
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.
To me, what success looks like is not to believe that Afghanistan can become a unified, Western-style democracy with a developed-country economy just yet. I think success in the American interest is some level of assurance that it’s not going to be a place that again leads to an attack on the American homeland.
By the way, conversely, one thing I’ve learned in my career, beginning when I ran for mayor, is that a lot of older voters are among the most excited about a younger candidate. So, you know, I think somebody of any age can deliver a compelling message.
I think for those of us who think that our morality is something that needs to be in touch with our religious faith personally, then it’s really important to explain that no one party has a monopoly on faith.
When people are economically or socially dislocated, they are always more vulnerable to being radicalized.
The world is changing, but it is not changing on its own.
Like public surface in general, sewers are unbelievably important. They’re so important that we make sure they work basically all of the time. Which is why you never think of them – that’s kind of the point.
Businesses always have competitors nipping at their heels. Historically, cities have not viewed themselves as subject to that same type of competition. But that’s wrong.
Like anyone who follows politics, I am sometimes mesmerized by the twisted and relentless drama playing out in Washington. But I also know about the price of distraction – the consequences of our attention being diverted from how politics affects daily life.
You could be a senior senator and have never managed more than a hundred people in your life.
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.
As a consultant at McKinsey, I learned the value of data and the ability to shape that information into an answer.
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.
Being gay isn’t something you choose, but you do face choices about whether and how to discuss it.
The Electoral College needs to go, because it’s made our society less and less democratic.
In many ways, Trump appeals to people’s smallness, their fears, whatever part of them wants to look backward.
Military service might sound like a totally different environment, but every experience you fall back on later, it makes you smarter. Why wouldn’t that be true of the military, too?
If Medicare today includes Medicare supplemental, why wouldn’t Medicare for all include a Medicare supplement for all who want it?
Because reading is a way of putting yourself in someone else’s experience, especially reading fiction.
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.
I don’t have a problem with enhanced border security, perhaps to include fencing. I think the mistake is believing that border security is as simple as just putting up a wall from sea to shining sea.
The death penalty has been one of many examples where racial discrimination has played out. You can see it in the simple fact that someone convicted of the same crime is more likely to face the death penalty if they are black.
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.
You’re not free if you can’t sue a financial institution that gets caught ripping you off.
As Democrats and progressives look to the future, we should remember our most essential values.
Physically robust infrastructure is not enough if it fails to foster a healthy community; ultimately, all infrastructure is social.
As a mayor, my instinct is to really think about how to get something done and not to make the promise unless you have some view of the pathway. You don’t have to have it all figured out, but you have to have a pathway there.
If I’m plowing the snow and filling in potholes, then I’m a good mayor, and if we fail to do that, I’m not. And it’s got almost nothing to do with whether, when I come home, it’s to a husband or to a wife.
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.
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.
In ‘Palaces for the People,’ Eric Klinenberg offers a new perspective on what people and places have to do with each other, by looking at the social side of our physical spaces.
The decision to serve needs to be independent of your politics.
Tearing apart a community, a business, and a family will make America worse off, every time.
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.
There’s this romantic idea that’s built up around war. But the pragmatic view is there are tons of people of my generation who have lost their lives, lost their marriages, or lost their health as a consequence of being sent to wars which could have been avoided.
The center of gravity of the American people is way to the left of the center of gravity of Congress and, in many ways, to the left of the national Democratic Party.
There’s a lot to be said for expanding the Earned Income Tax Credit.
I’ve always been terrible at land navigation.
Safety and security are the most basic job of government. I understand that – both as a mayor who works every day to secure public safety and reduce crime, and also as someone who deployed in uniform to Afghanistan because I believed joining the military was part of my duty to help keep my country safe.
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.
