We really have to, as a country, recognize that school is where people get their identity not just as a scholar, or a future business person, but as a citizen. And we need to make sure that schools set them up for success as citizens.

When somebody says the best thing you can do is be tough, the best thing you can do is use your brute force, then we're selling ourselves short.

As an American people, what is greatest about our history are the many times we have led this world away from hate, towards hope.

When you're smart on crime, you start off by recognizing that both the victim, first of all, the victim, but also the person who did the crime are both human.

Growing up as a black kid with a white father who loves you, who affirms you, who was part of your life is fundamentally different than what black people in my family were subjected to in the 19th century or the 18th century. But unfortunately, it doesn't change the old racial order. I think we need to let the old racial order just stay where it is and not seek to improve upon it. Not try to create more racial categories, because all that does is it makes a race stick around longer.

Let us invest less and less in war and tax cuts for the richest 1 percent, and more and more in jobs and schools for the other 99 percent.

Civil marriage, like all civil rights provided by the government, must be provided equally to all Americans.