If you run you stand a chance of losing, but if you don't run you've already lost.

The true test of the American ideal is whether we're able to recognize our failings and then rise together to meet the challenges of our time. Whether we allow ourselves to be shaped by events and history, or whether we act to shape them. Whether chance of birth or circumstance decides life's big winners and losers, or whether we build a community where, at the very least, everyone has a chance to work hard, get ahead, and reach their dreams.

If you look at what happened, I came in the middle of the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. And unlike Franklin Delano Roosevelt who waited, well, didn't take office until about three years into the Great Depression, it was happening just as I was elected.

It's good to get fresh legs in [the White house]. I think that it refreshes our democracy.

We've had every official in Hawaii, Democrat and Republican, every news outlet that has investigated this, confirm that, yes, in fact, I was born in Hawaii, Aug. 4, 1961, in Kapiolani Hospital.

... our interests and our conscience compel us to act on behalf of those who long for freedom. And we must be a source of hope to the poor, the sick, the marginalized, the victims of prejudice.

Democracy demands that the religiously motivated translate their concerns into universal, rather than religion-specific, values.