If I had a son, he'd look like Trayvon.

Every major world religion has identified marriage as between a man and a woman.

There are folks who will equivocate. They'll say, 'You know, I'm not a scientist.' Well, I'm not either. But the best scientists in the world know that climate change is happening.

All this marked them as vaguely liberal, although their ideas would never congeal into anything like a firm ideology; in this, too, they were American.

I will cut investments in unproven missile defense systems.

It [the Constitution] didn't break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the founding fathers in the Constitution, at least as it's been interpreted, and the Warren court interpreted it in the same way that generally the Constitution is a charter of negative liberties. It says what the states can't do to you, it says what the federal government can't do to you, but it doesn't say what the federal government or the state government must do on your behalf. And that hasn't shifted.

That's when America soars, when we look out for one another and we take care of each other, when we root for one another's success, when we strive to do better and to be better than the generation that came before us and try to build something better for generations to come, that's why we do what we do. That's the whole point of public service.