I believe in keeping guns out of our inner cities, and that our leaders must say so in the face of the gun manufacturer's lobby.

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

I'm not the caricature that you see on Fox News or Rush Limbaugh, but I'm somebody who is interested in solving problems and is pretty practical, and that, actually, a lot of the things that we've put in place worked better than people might think.

I think one of the tragedies of the civil rights movement was because the civil rights movement became so court-focused, I think that there was a tendency to lose track of the political and community organizing, and activities on the ground, that are able to put together the actual coalitions of power throughout which you bring about redistributive change. And in some ways, we still suffer from that.

One of the great things about being commander in chief is getting to know our men and women in uniform in a very intimate way, whether it's visiting Walter Reed and seeing our wounded soldiers, or being on a base and talking to families, or interacting with them on missions. They're the best of the best: always thinking about the mission, not thinking about credit, not thinking about who's up front.

Excuses are tools of the incompetent used to build bridges to nowhere and monuments of nothingness

All the strands of my life came together and I really became a man when I moved to Chicago.