I want every young man who sees me to know that I'm not that different from them. I wasn't born into wealth. I wasn't born into fame. I made a lot of mistakes - but I kept at it.

I kept finding the same anguish, the same doubt; a self-contempt that neither irony nor intellect seemed able to deflect. Even DuBois’s learning and Baldwin’s love and Langston’s humor eventually succumbed to its corrosive force, each man finally forced to doubt art’s redemptive power, each man finally forced to withdraw, one to Africa, one to Europe, one deeper into the bowels of Harlem, but all of them in the same weary flight, all of them exhausted, bitter men, the devil at their heels.

There is enough oil out there for world demand. It is true that a lot of what's driving oil prices up right now is not the lack of supply. There's enough supply.

That bright blue ball rising over the moon's surface, containing everything we hold dear - the laughter of children, a quiet sunset, all the hopes and dreams of posterity - that's what's at stake. That's what we're fighting for. And if we remember that, I'm absolutely sure we'll succeed.

I use a different style if I'm speaking to a big crowd; I can gin up folks pretty well. But when I'm in these town hall settings, my job is not to throw them a lot of red meat. I want to give them a sense of my thought process.

I do have an obligation to make sure that I am following some of the rules. I can't simply ignore laws that are out there.

We have a stake in one another...what binds us together is greater than what drives us apart.