The Charade Around Changing the World

There are two kinds of social problems — engine problems and crime scene problems.

How do we build an America in which being a little darker is not a presumption of guilt of foreignness, but in which we're also not joyless and unable to deal with [...] recognizing each other's differences?

I'm still in many rooms that are old and problematic, but I'm also in a lot of room that are radically new.

An America that is open, plural, gender equal, tolerant, and brings the whole world in — that's the mega force.

In writing, if you are telling people things that they already know, that's not good. If you are telling people things they've never though of before or have no relation to their reality, that's also not good. Ideally, you want to tell people things that they've vaguely sensed and you want to elevate that to a level of being out there.

My whole book [Winners Take All] is about rich people trying to change the world while making sure their world doesn't change.

When the winners of our age takeover social change and the entrepreneurial class becomes in charge of it, they show up on crime scenes with the engineer mentality and they try to strip away blame and the very idea of justice from the improvement of our society.

We, [America], are actually trying to do something incredibly hard right now on a 50 to 100 year scale — which is to become a country without a majority.

There are millions of people who are still undecided on whether they're down with the new America or not.

America is on track to basically become a subset of humanity.

Is there space among the woke for the still waking?

We live in a time of extraordinary inequality. Extreme inequality creates a dual psychology.

Generosity is not a substitute for justice. It is not the same thing as justice.

We have to be mindful of the bigger arc of history.

I don't think the 'woke' are going to be very safe if we just circle the wagons of the woke.

In New York, it is punishing to be in the middle.

We are actually living on the cusp, if we choose it, of an extraordinary time.

A society is only as good as its active citizenship.

Those of us who are from more than one place can sometimes be defensive in a way that's uncharitable and misses opportunities.

We can't afford to lose sight of the extraordinary thing we're trying to do and the way in which we're actually doing it.