Quotes from Pete Buttigieg

The background of a mayor of a city of any size is a background of somebody who on one hand is an executive and on the other hand is very close to the ground.

Most people have trouble pronouncing my name, so they just call me 'Mayor Pete.'

So much of politics is about people's relationships with themselves. You do better if you make people feel secure in who they are.

As we see dislocation and disruption in certain parts of the country, from rural areas to my home in the industrial Midwest, and in the economy, this leads to a kind of disorientation and loss of community and identity. That void can be filled through constructive and positive things, like community involvement or family.

By the way, conversely, one thing I've learned in my career, beginning when I ran for mayor, is that a lot of older voters are among the most excited about a younger candidate. So, you know, I think somebody of any age can deliver a compelling message.

My voting rights agenda is not that different from what you'd see in H.R. 1.

When people are economically or socially dislocated, they are always more vulnerable to being radicalized.

My marriage to Chasten has made me a better man.

I was well into adulthood before I was prepared to acknowledge the simple fact that I am gay. It took years of struggle and growth for me to recognize that it's just a fact of life, like having brown hair, and part of who I am.

You're not free if you can't sue a financial institution that gets caught ripping you off.

Physically robust infrastructure is not enough if it fails to foster a healthy community; ultimately, all infrastructure is social.

There's this romantic idea that's built up around war. But the pragmatic view is there are tons of people of my generation who have lost their lives, lost their marriages, or lost their health as a consequence of being sent to wars which could have been avoided.

I think there's an opportunity hopefully for religion to be not so much used as a cudgel but invoked as a way of calling us to higher values.

I believe in capitalism as long as there's a strong rule of law around it.

The world is changing, but it is not changing on its own.

If Medicare today includes Medicare supplemental, why wouldn't Medicare for all include a Medicare supplement for all who want it?

The force that has come closest across American history to actually ending America was white supremacy. That was the Civil War.

We need to intentionally invest in health, in home ownership, in entrepreneurship, in access to democracy, in economic empowerment. If we don't do these things, we shouldn't be surprised that racial inequality persists because inequalities compound.

An election is supposed to be about our whole country - we can't just concentrate on those areas where people, for the most part, already agree with us.

We need to consider a financial transactions tax. And we need to ask whether the top marginal tax rates are really appropriate, given that the effective tax rates paid by the wealthy are often actually lower than those paid by the rest of us.

That really important freedom in my life, the freedom to marry, came about because of choices that were made by policymakers who had power over me and millions of others.

As a consultant at McKinsey, I learned the value of data and the ability to shape that information into an answer.

I met my husband through an app that talks to social-networking sites, and that's how we were sort of suggested to each other, and it turned out to be a great match.

When I was fourteen, Mom and Dad sent me to St. Joseph High School, the Catholic school up the hill from our place, housed in a 1950s-era tan brick building sometimes confused for a light industrial structure due to the surprisingly high smokestack of its old incinerator.