Even as people take pride in their national independence, we know we are becoming more and more interdependent.

If you want to know where I come by the passionate commitment I have to bringing people together without regard to race, it all started with my grandfather.

Americans long to be united. After 9/11, we all just wanted to be one nation. Not a single American on September the 12, 2001, cared who won the next presidential election.

I love the HRC. The initials are great.

If we want to invest in the prosperity of our nation, we must invest in the education of our children so that their talents may be fully employed.

If you believe in a security strategy - a strategy of more friends and fewer enemies, a strategy of greater cooperation and a strategy of keeping America better at home as we grow more diverse - we have to build the minds and hearts to build this kind of world.

Our paradigm now seems to be: Something terrible happened to us on September 11, and that gives us the right to interpret all future events in a way that everyone else in the world must agree with us. And if they don't, they can go straight to hell.