I'm not talking about blind optimism, the kind of hope that just ignores the enormity of the tasks ahead or the road blocks that stand in our path. I'm not talking about the wishful idealism that allows us to just sit on the sidelines or shirk from a fight. I have always believed that hope is that stubborn thing inside us that insists, despite all the evidence to the contrary, that something better awaits us so long as we have the courage to keep reaching, to keep working, to keep fighting.

Find somebody to be successful for. Raise their hopes. Rise to their needs.

Young people recognize the big challenges that are coming up.

What we saw was that the Ferguson Police Department in conjunction with the municipality saw traffic stops, arrests, tickets as a revenue generator, as opposed to serving the community, and that it systematically was biased against African-Americans in that city who were stopped, harassed, mistreated, abused, called names, fined.

We can be civil to each other, and we can try to express ourselves acknowledging that we're all patriots, we're all Americans, and not assume the absolute worst in people's motives.

[T]hese tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans are also the tax cuts that are least likely to promote growth.

The 20th Century was a bloodbath, and for all the frustrations and failures of the project to unify Europe, the last five decades have been periods of unprecedented peace, growth, and prosperity in Europe.