The ability of Republican leaders to rile up their base - helped along by folks like Rush Limbaugh, some commentators on Fox News - I think created an environment in which Republican voters would punish Republicans for cooperating with me. That hothouse of back-and-forth argument and - and really sharp partisanship I think has been harmful to America.

My main message is to the parents of Trayvon Martin. You know, if I had a son, he'd look like Trayvon.

If all it took was someone proclaiming I believe Jesus Christ and that he died for my sins, and that was all there was to it, people wouldn't have to keep coming to church, would they.

Higher minimum wages, full-employment programs, early-childhood education: Those kinds of programs are, by design, universal, but by definition, because they are helping folks who are in the worst economic situations, are most likely to disproportionately impact and benefit African Americans. They also have the benefit of being sellable to a majority of the body politic.

Hope is not blind optimism. It's not ignoring the enormity of the task ahead or the roadblocks that stand in our path. It's not sitting on the sidelines or shirking from a fight. Hope is that thing inside us that insists, despite all evidence to the contrary, that something better awaits us if we have the courage to reach for it, and to work for it, and to fight for it. Hope is the belief that destiny will not be written for us, but by us, by the men and women who are not content to settle for the world as it is, who have the courage to remake the world as it should be.

What is certainly true is that the United States has to have a presence to promote the values that we care about.

[The Americans] believe in the idea that a child shouldn't be consigned to poverty just because of circumstances of their birth.