"Coming from a lower-middle-class family, I will never forget how money or, really, lack of money was always a point of stress in our family... My experience as a child growing up in a family that struggled economically powerfully influenced my values,” he went on, describing growing up the son of a Polish-Jewish immigrant paint salesman who lost nearly his entire family in the Holocaust....Unlike Donald Trump, who shut down the government and left 800,000 federal employees without income to pay their bills, I know what it’s like to be in a family that lives paycheck to paycheck... I did not have a father who gave me millions of dollars to buy luxury skyscrapers, casinos, and country clubs. I did not come from a family that gave me a $200,000 allowance every year beginning at the age of 3. As I recall, my allowance was 25 cents a week...I did not come from a family that taught me to build a corporate empire through housing discrimination, I protested housing discrimination, was arrested for protesting school segregation, and one of the proudest days of my life was attending the March On Washington For Jobs and Freedom led Dr. Martin Luther King Jr."

“In my view, and we've introduced legislation to deal with this, if a bank is too big to fail, it is too big to exist.”

“We are going to transform this country and finally create an economy and a government which works for all of us, not just the 1 percent. The underlying principles of our government will not be greed, hatred and lies. It will not be racism, sexism, xenophobia, homophobia and religious bigotry. This campaign will be based on justice—on economic justice, on social justice, on racial justice, on environmental justice.”

“If you are serious about real healthcare reform, the only way to go is single-payer.”

“There is one major country that does not guarantee health care to all people. There is one major country--the United States--which ends up spending almost three times per capita what they do in the U.K. guaranteeing health care to all people, 50 percent more than they do in France guaranteeing health care to all people, far more than our Canadian neighbors, who guarantee health care to all people.”

“Want to get on the front page of the paper? I have to make some vicious attack. I won't do that. I’m running an issue-oriented campaign.”

“I learnt a lot about democracy in the schoolyards of Brooklyn, New York.”