Me, I was waiting tables of 13 and married at 19. I graduated from public schools, and taught elementary school.
Rising student-loan debt is an economic emergency.
I grew up in a family that nearly lost everything, but I ended up in the United States Senate because I grew up in an America that invested in kids like me and built a real future for us.
Never be so faithful to your plan that you are unwilling to consider the unexpected. Never be so faithful to your plan that you are unwilling to entertain the improbable opportunity that comes looking for you.
You can put handcuffs on people who push the envelope. When they break the law, they deserve to have handcuffs.
When people feel like, 'Lenders weren't fair with me; I don't have any responsibility to be fair with them.' If we go far enough down that line, much of the fabric of our economy starts to unravel.
Americans are fighters. We're tough, resourceful and creative, and if we have the chance to fight on a level playing field, where everyone pays a fair share and everyone has a real shot, then no one - no one can stop us.
Going to college and finding a good job no longer guarantee economic safety.
I think I grew up with a profound sense of watching people who were good people, who were smart people, who were hardworking people - God, nobody on this Earth worked harder than my mom and dad - and they had very little.
I graduated law school nine months pregnant and didn't take a job.
In America today, a young person needs more education after high school just to have a chance to make it in the middle class. Not a guarantee, just a chance to make it.
There is one thing Anthony Weiner and I agree on: there are a lot of smart, hard-working people in the financial industry.
I know what I am in Washington to do: I'm here to fight for hardworking families.
Even families with health insurance are quite vulnerable to a severe economic reversal if someone gets sick.
I pay for homeowner's insurance, I pay for car insurance, I pay for health insurance.
It is not good not to have health insurance; that leaves the family very vulnerable.
Groupthink can become a serious issue - old ideas stay around after they're useful, and new ideas too often don't get a fair hearing.
I loved teaching, but every day that I went to work, I carried the worry that I was hurting my kids because I wasn't at home with them.
If nobody can sell mortgage-backed securities based on trillions of dollars of unpayable instruments, there's a lot less risk in the overall system.
How do you think we build a future? I think we build it by investing in our kids and investing in education.
