Throughout my career, I have lived by the principles of personal honor and professional integrity.

What I'm trying to do is teach people how to actually get individuals in organizations to do the kinds of things to make a difference. It starts with not just studying the mechanics but really understanding how people operate.

Our bureaucracy had excelled at compartmentalizing intelligence - we had a 'need to know' system - but by 2004, it was impossible to foresee what elements of our organization would and would not need to know a given piece of information.

In our society, I see public media as a lever. It pushes people by elevating them and their sights. It brings them into more thinking and understanding, and it brings us together.

Harvey Milk was a friend of mine, an important gay leader in San Francisco in the '70s, and he carried a really important message about how important it was to be visible, how important it was to come out, and that was the single most important thing we had to do.

Bill Gates can't control a high-level-energy dog, because his energy is very low, very calm. Very intellectual. A dog doesn't see that as leadership.

Iran continues to explicitly threaten to destroy the state of Israel, America's most important ally in the region. Its leaders continue to shout, 'Death to America.' If Iran wants to be a part of the world community, it should renounce such statements.

Democracy has always been in crisis: democracy is all about practicing the art of bearable dissatisfaction. In democratic societies, people often complain about their leaders and their institutions. The gap between the ideal democracy and the existing one cannot be bridged.