Leadership is not a position or a title, it is action and example.

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.

As I review the great history of our nation, community organizers have been at the center of so many of our great social movements.

When American citizens pull together, there is little we can't accomplish.

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.

I still remember how upset I was in the aftermath of President Obama's election, where people in Republican leadership didn't say that, "Hey, I want to focus on the issues and values of our country," but, "My number one goal is to see that Barack Obama is not a two term president." That to me is outrageous. I would never do that. My number one goal is to fight to protect poor people, ethnic and religious minorities, working class folks.

Real courage is holding on to a still voice in your head that says, 'I must keep going.' It's that voice that says nothing is a failure if it is not final. That voice that says to you, 'Get out of bed. Keep going. I will not quit.'