You get respect when you give respect. That's how you get respect.
Mayors could never get away with the kind of nonsense that goes on in Washington. In our world, you either picked up the trash or you didn't. You either moved an abandoned car or you didn't. You either filled a pothole or you didn't. That's what we do every day. And we know how to get this stuff done.
A father is a person who's around, participating in a child's life. He's a teacher who helps to guide and shape and mold that young person, someone for that young person to talk to, to share with, their ups and their downs, their fears and their concerns.
There is no Democratic or Republican way to fill a pothole.
You know, public service is serious enough on its own, and what I've found is if you take yourself take yourself too seriously in this business, you'll lose sight of what it is that you're trying to get done. So I mean I've tried to have the proper mix of being a serious public servant, but also still being a regular guy.
Parents who neglect their children, who don't know where they are, who don't know what they're doing, who don't know who they're hanging out with, you're gonna find yourselves spending some quality time with your kids, in jail, together.
In Philadelphia, our public safety, poverty reduction, health and economic development all start with education. We can't grow the middle class if we don't give our kids the tools they need to innovate and invent.
Mayors are leaders, doers. We get things done, and we are moving America's cities forward.
If you have a deep-seated need to be loved and admired every day, you shouldn't be in politics. You should go work at a pet store.
The computer is your passport, not only to the future but to knowing what's going around you.
I'm a big supporter of the Second Amendment. But I think I have a First Amendment right not to be shot.
I believe that people, regardless of their station in life, should be able to sit down at a table to a meal - inside away from the heat and cold, the rain and the snow.
What the mayors care about is, 'How can I get money to invest in the infrastructure in my city? How do we put people back to work, lower the unemployment rate, provide for job training programs? How do we make class sizes smaller and make investments in our children from an education standpoint?'
I think that when we have a better educated society, when there is less violence in our cities, when people get back into the workforce and have the opportunity to take care of themselves and their families - that for me really is the kind of success and the kind of America that I think most of us still want, we aspire to.
I believe in the critical importance of participating in the political system - from voting to standing for election. It's both rewarding and necessary that men and women of good will and clear thinking engage in honest, open debate.
Part of the problem in politics is that people only look at the next four to eight years: kick the can down the road and say, 'Hey, it's the next person's problem.'
If you want to act like a butthead, your butt is going to get locked up.
Somehow, someway, for some people there's an automatic assumption that a mayor who is African-American or some other elected official has to support another African-American.
To succeed in big-city politics requires a powerful, motivating vision of a better world, a plan to get there, a willingness to meet constituents on their terms, and a tough political skin.
Whether it's on the streets of Philadelphia or New York or Chicago or Atlanta or in a classroom in Newtown, Connecticut, people want to be safe.
