“Too often, people get jobs based on who they know - not what they know.”
“What I've learned is that real change is very, very hard. But I've also learned that change is possible - if you fight for it.”
“Writing laws based on an abstract theory, rather than reality, is a dangerous undertaking.”
“Part of my job is to make sense of all that I hear, and to retell it in a forceful way so that the decision-makers at Treasury can hear it. At least that's how I see it.”
“Banks were once places to hold money and were very careful in lending to finance families as they built a future - bought homes, bought cars, took out student loans.”
“I don't want to go to Washington to be a co-sponsor of some bland little bill nobody cares about. I don't want to go to Washington to get my name on something that makes small change at the margin.”
“I had a baby and stayed home for a couple of years, and I was really casting about, thinking, 'What am I going to do?' My husband's view of it was, 'Stay home... We'll have more children; you'll love this.' And I was very restless about it.”
“I made it real clear to the business community - if your plan for innovation is to trick people, is to fool them, is not to tell them the truth about the price, then you're right: I'm going to be right in the way.”
“If the big banks expect to buy influence when they give money to favored think tanks, then the public has a right to know. If the big banks don't expect to buy influence and are merely making charitable contributions, then their shareholders have a right to know. Either way, there's no excuse for keeping these payments secret.”
“If the notion on this is we're going to elect somebody to the United States Senate so they can be the 100th least senior person in there and be polite, and somewhere in their fourth or fifth year do some bipartisan bill that nobody cares about, don't vote for me.”