I think Americans want to believe in this country again.

I'm used to people not paying me a whole lot of attention and underestimating me and, frankly, for me a big challenge is to have people believe that I can be the president of the United States.

I want to rebuild America.

If we can rebuild Iraq, we can rebuild Illinois and Indiana and if we can do Baghdad, we can do Baltimore.

The really important victory of the civil rights movement was that it made racism unpopular, whereas a generation ago at the turn of the last century, you had to embrace racism to get elected to anything.

Well, if you pick a fight with somebody that's smaller than you and you beat them, where's the honor in that?

It's hard to be the first. It's almost as if I'm subject to a different level of inspection.