When I look at that record in light of the 1985 job application to the [Ronald] Reagan Justice Department, it's even more troubling.That document lays out an ideological agenda that highlights Judge Samuel Alito in belonging to an alumni group at Princeton that opposed the admission of women and proposed to curb the admission of racial minorities.

Frankly, I don't mind not being President. I just mind that someone else is.

People of faith should not invoke the power of the state to decide what everyone can believe or think or read or do. In such cases, like abortion or prayer or prohibition or sexual identity, the proper role of religion is to appeal to the free conscience of each person, not the coercive rule of secular law.

This is the greatest lesson a child can learn. It is the greatest lesson anyone can learn. It has been the greatest lesson I have learned: if you persevere, stick w/it, work @ it, you have a real opportunity to achieve something. Sure, there will be storms along the way. And you might not reach your goal right away. But if you do your best and keep a true compass, you'll get there.

One question we must consider today is how we can take action to unify our nation, heal racial division, end poverty and give real-life meaning to the constitutional mandate that there be equal protection under law.

I hope for an America where we can all contend freely and vigorously, but where we will treasure and guard those standards of civility which alone make this nation safe for both democracy and diversity.

[W]ords are fine, but it has to be what a generation reads into those words.