Confidence is the immaterial residue of material actions. Confidence is the public face of competence.

The fact is, I can vote for anybody; independents, Republicans, Democrats. But I'm a registered Democrat in the District of Columbia.

Choose your words meticulously and then let them rumble up from some deep furnace of conviction.

It's exciting to work with the kids so devoid of irony, so unguarded. And also terrifying

The informed, unmanaged question. That's the most dangerous thing at a press conference anywhere.

It is one thing to rouse the passion of a people, and quite another to lead them.

[Barack Obama] says that he thinks America felt better, more confident, because Washington was not simply in a gridlock, in stasis, where nothing was being done. And he talks about that as a positive.