I kept finding the same anguish, the same doubt; a self-contempt that neither irony nor intellect seemed able to deflect. Even DuBois’s learning and Baldwin’s love and Langston’s humor eventually succumbed to its corrosive force, each man finally forced to doubt art’s redemptive power, each man finally forced to withdraw, one to Africa, one to Europe, one deeper into the bowels of Harlem, but all of them in the same weary flight, all of them exhausted, bitter men, the devil at their heels.

In November [2016], Americans are gonna have to make a decision about what we care about and who we are. We get these spasms of politics around immigration and fearmongering and then our traditions and our history and our better impulses kick in. That's how we all ended up here. 'Cause I guarantee you at some point every one of us has somebody in our background who people didn't want coming here. And yet here we are.

Any fool can have a child. That doesn't make you a father. It's the courage to raise a child that makes you a father.

America must always lead on the world stage. If we don't, no one else will. The military that you have joined is, and always will be, the backbone of that leadership. But U.S. military action cannot be the only - or even primary - component of our leadership in every instance. Just because we have the best hammer does not mean that every problem is a nail.

The biggest deficit that we have in our society and in the world right now is an empathy deficit. We are in great need of people being able to stand in somebody else's shoes and see the world through their eyes.

While freedom is a gift from God, it must be secured by his people here on earth.

Health care costs generally have gone up at a significantly slower rate since ObamaCare was passed than they did before, which has saved the federal Treasury hundreds of billions of dollars.