Teddy Roosevelt supported a progressive income tax. If I am sitting pretty and you've got a waitress who is making minimum wage plus tips, and I can afford it and she can't, what's the big deal for me to say, 'I'm going to pay a little bit more'? That is neighborliness.

I would love to see an America where race is understood in the same way that the ethnic diversity of the white population is understood.

To anyone out there who has ever been assaulted: You will never be alone. You are never alone. We have your back. I've got your back.

This pleased Onyango, for to him knowledge was the source of all the white man's power, and he wanted to make sure that his son was as educated as any white man.

In our household, the Bible, the Koran and the Bhagavad Gita sat on the shelf alongside books of Greek and Norse and African mythology

It's not enough to celebrate the ideals that we're built on, liberty and justice and equality for all. Those just can't be words on paper, the work of every generation is to make those words mean something, concrete in the lives of our children. And we won't get there as long as kids in Baltimore or Ferguson or New York or Appalachia or the Mississippi delta or the Pine Ridge reservation believe that their lives are somehow worthless.

Islam has always been part of America