You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. And what I mean by that [is] it's an opportunity to do things that you think you could not before.

About the quote: Emanuel was not the first to express this idea, as pointed out in a 2009 New York Times Magazine article. However this statement - which proposed a way the Obama administration could actually harness the chaos of the Financial Crisis of 2008 - became a frequently-repeated slogan for many economists, policy makers and business people who sought to improve the world's financial and economic systems.