Our job as Americans is to restore that basic bargain that says, if you work hard, if you're willing to meet your responsibilities, you can get ahead. You can get ahead. Doesn't matter what you look like, doesn't matter where you come from. Our middle class, when it's growing, when it's thriving, when there are ladders of opportunity for people to do a little bit better each year and then make sure that their kids are doing even better than them, that's the American dream. That's what we got to fight for. That has to be the north star that guides everything we do.

We will remember that we are not as divided as our politics suggests; that we are one people; we are one nation and together, we will begin the next great chapter in the American story with three words that will ring from coast to coast, from sea to shining sea:- Yes. We. Can.

I'm here with the Girardo family here in St. Louis.

While we breathe, we will hope.

We're not going to put the cart before the horse and just think by sending more troops, we're automatically going to make Americans safe.

Our founders made it extraordinarily difficult to amend the Constitution.

[A]lthough the principle of equality has always been self-evident, it has never been self-executing.