We cannot have a society, in which some dictator some place can start imposing censorship here in the United States.

When Michelle and I decided that I would run for President, it was because of a shared belief in the power of community and connection, a commitment to the idea that we are our brothers' keepers.

If you’re walking down the right path and you’re willing to keep walking, eventually you’ll make progress.

You didn't build that. Somebody else made that happen.

I absolutely think that it's possible for us to find common ground.

Later, I would realize that the position of most black students in predominantly white colleges was already too tenuous, our identities too scrambled, to admit to ourselves that our black pride remained incomplete. And to admit our doubt and confusion to whites, to open up our psyches to general examination by those who had caused so much of the damage in the first place, seemed ludicrous, itself an expression of self-hatred - for there seemed no reason to expect that whites would look at our private struggles as a mirror into their own souls, rather than yet more evidence of black pathology.

I think it's really important to enlarge the issue behind abortion. I have been serving for over two decades and I have seen year in and year out largely the Republicans voting against women's contraception, family planning.