Deval Patrick
Deval Patrick
Deval Laurdine Patrickis an American politician and civil rights lawyer who served as the 71st governor of Massachusetts from 2007 to 2015. A member of the Democratic Party, Patrick served as the United States assistant attorney general for the civil rights division under President Bill Clinton. He was first elected in 2006, succeeding Mitt Romney who chose not to run, and re-elected in 2010. He is the first and currently, the only African-American to have served as governor of Massachusetts...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPolitician
Date of Birth31 July 1956
CountryUnited States of America
I view the experiences that I have had - both the tough ones and the pleasant ones - as gifts.
Be present - and see what a difference it makes in your lives and in the world.
Don't tell me words don't matter,
It's time for democrats to grow a backbone and stand up for what we believe.
I'd like to have another opportunity to serve. I believe in service. I enjoy it. I also like coming and going, you know, because I think that my private-sector life has contributed to how I think about public-sector challenges and what I do in the public sector.
This is a horrific day in Boston. My thoughts and prayers are with those who have been injured.
My grandma forbid us from describing ourselves as poor. She said, 'we're broke.' Because broke is temporary.
In the view of some people, you can only believe in civil rights if you work as a civil rights lawyer. I just don't buy that.
I have never taken a job or done a job where I felt I needed to leave my conscience at the door. One of the great things about not being in politics as a career is that I can do this job without thinking about my career. I can think about what we're trying to do, what we're trying to accomplish and what we're trying to leave.
The summer before my third year of law school, I worked at a law firm in Washington, D.C. I turned 25 that July, and on my birthday, my father happened to be playing in a local jazz club called Pigfoot and invited me to join him. I hadn't spent a birthday with him since I was 3, but I agreed.
People aren't going to go bankrupt anymore if they have a serious illness, which was a serious issue here in the country before the Affordable Care Act. And, in fact, the expense of expanding health care for those who need the subsidy is picked up by the federal government for most of the early years.
I very much believe in values-based leadership and that the values that I believe in and try to govern by are transcendent values.
I remember how my dad was so into herbal solutions and health food well before that stuff became popular.
I grew up on the south side of Chicago, most of that time on welfare. My mother and sister and I used to live with my grandparents and various cousins. We shared a two-bedroom tenement, and the three of us slept in one of those bedrooms and had a set of bunk beds.