Paul Wellstone

I saw as a teacher how, if you take that spark of learning that those children have, and you ignite it, you can take a child from any background to a lifetime of creativity and accomplishment.

When too many Americans don’t vote or participate, some see apathy and despair. I see disappointment and even outrage. And I believe that out of this frustration can come hope and action.

Politics isn’t about big money or power games; it’s about the improvement of people’s lives.

The idea of democracy has been stripped of it moral imperatives and come to denote hollowness and hypocrisy.

I represent the Democratic wing of the Democratic party.

Never separate the life you live from the words you speak.

The kind of national goal we ought to be thinking about is way beyond national product – it is how do we as a nation help our children be the best kinds of people they could possibly be?

Politics is not about money.

The American polity is infected with a serious imbalance of power between elites and masses, a power which is the principal threat to our democracy.

The future will belong to those who have passion and are willing to work hard to make our country better.

Successful organizing is based on the recognition that people get organized because they, too, have a vision.

Above and beyond the question of how to grow the economy there is a legitimate concern about how to grow the quality of our lives.

What the poor, the weak, and the inarticulate desperately require is power, organization, and a sense of identity and purpose, not rarefied advice of political scientists.

I think the future also will not belong to those who are cynical or those who stand on the sidelines.

The first task in teaching is to bring to consciousness what the students already believe by virtue of their personal experiences about themselves and society.

Our politics are our deepest form of expression: they mirror our past experiences and reflect our dreams and aspirations for the future.

Politics is not about winning for the sake of winning.

Education and democracy have the same goal: the fullest possible development of human capabilities.

Sometimes, the only realists are the dreamers.

We can and must move U.S. politics forward by means of committed participation.

There are three critical ingredients to democratic renewal and progressive change in America: good public policy, grassroots organizing and electoral politics.

The people of this country, not special interest big money, should be the source of all political power.

Our aims in political activism are not, and should not be, to create a perfect utopia.

It is the belief that extremes and excesses of inequality must be reduced so that each person is free to fully develop his or her full potential. This is why we take precious time out of our lives and give it to politics.

I was talking about no nukes, the farm crisis. People said that wasn’t stuff that a state auditor was supposed to be talking about. Maybe they were right.

If a teacher does not involve himself, his values, his commitments, in the course of discussion, why should the students?

As free citizens in a political democracy, we have a responsibility to be interested and involved in the affairs of the human community, be it at the local or the global level.

Why don’t we call on the credit card companies to be accountable? They need to be held accountable for their predatory lending practices.

Politics is about the improvement of people’s lives. It’s about advancing the cause of peace and justice in our country and the world. Politics is about doing well for the people.

We can remake the world daily.

What makes community organizing especially attractive is the faith it places in the ability of the poor to make decisions for themselves.

The only way to change is to vote. People are responsible.

I don’t think politics has anything to do with left, right, or center. It has to do with trying to do right by people.

Politics is not about power.

If we don’t fight hard enough for the things we stand for, at some point we have to recognize that we don’t really stand for them.

A politics that is not sensitive to the concerns and circumstances of people’s lives, a politics that does not speak to and include people, is an intellectually arrogant politics that deserves to fail.

Politics is not predictions and politics is not observations. Politics is what we do. Politics is what we do, politics is what we create, by what we work for, by what we hope for and what we dare to imagine.

Without trying, I’m different.

I’m short, I’m Jewish and I’m a liberal.

There is a major ingredient missing from our perception of how changes are brought about; that ingredient is power.

I emphasize self-esteem, self-confidence, and dignity, not as an ideal, but as a real test of community organization. Without leadership development, community organizations do not have staying power.