You could analyze me and say that my father leaving and being absent was a motivator for early ambition, trying to prove myself to this apparition who had vanished. You could argue that me being a mixed kid in a place where there weren't a lot of black kids around might have spurred on my ambitions. You could go through a whole litany of things that sparked me wanting to do something important.

We are in what we hope is an intensive diplomatic phase now. It will not be open-ended.

We are the change we have been waiting for.

I cannot swallow whole the view of Lincoln as the Great Emancipator.

The question we ask today is not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether government works.

I believe that there are many paths to the same place, and that is a belief that there is a higher power, a belief that we are connected as a people.

Here's what I can tell the American people: 95 percent of you will get a tax cut. And if you make less than $250,000, less than a quarter-million dollars a year, then you will not see one dime's worth of tax increase.