I think that part of my optimism comes from the belief that we as a people could actually, regardless of all the disadvantage of the past, regardless of the fact that a lot of other folks got a head start in the race, if we were able to make the race fair right now.

And if that child should ever get the chance to travel the world and someone should ask her where is she from, we believe that she should always be able to hold her head high with pride in her voice when she answers, "I am an American." That is the course we seek. That is the change we are calling for.

If you listen to the rhetoric, it is so over-the-top and so overheated, and most importantly, is not acknowledging the fact that there's nothing else [like guns] in our lives that we purchase where we don't try to make it a little safer if we can.

Being attentive to inequality and not tone deaf to it. But offering prescriptions that are actually going to help folks in communities that feel forgotten. That's going to be our most important strategy. And I think we can successfully do that.

That is our generation’s task - to make these words, these rights, these values of life and liberty and the pursuit of happiness real for every American.

Climate change poses a direct threat to the infrastructure of America that we need to stay competitive in this 21st-century economy.

I don't think there's a lot of dispute for this. You can argue that we didn't get everything done that we wanted to get done, but I can make a really strong argument, and I think prove, that by almost every measure the country's better off now than when I started.