No matter what, we always have the power to choose hope over despair, engagement over apathy, kindness over indifference, love over hate.

I still have that new senator smell.

There is too much disagreement for disagreement's sake. In a time of persistent challenges that still call into question our most sacred aspirations as a country, we cannot afford shallow callous divisiveness in our public debate.

Go out there and swear to this world your oath, not with your words, but with what you do. Not with your hand over your heart, but with your hand outstretched to a world that desperately needs your hand, your help, your insights, your creativity, your honor, your courage. It needs you.

The message to both parties should be right now that we need to find ways to work together to speak to the American public.

I sit in the Senate, and see what Republicans are often advocating, it's those kind of tax loopholes for the richest of the rich or, frankly, for corporations and giving incentives for them to move jobs and opportunity overseas.

You need to understand something, you drink deeply from wells of freedom and liberty and opportunity that you did not dig. You eat lavishly from banquet tables prepared for you by your ancestors. You sit under the shade of trees that you did not plant or cultivate or care for. You have a choice in life, you can just sit back, getting fat, dumb, and happy, consuming all the blessings put before you, or it can metabolize inside of you, become fuel to get you into the fight, to make this democracy real, to make it true to its words that we can be a nation of liberty and justice for all.