“I’ve just concluded that for me personally it is important for me to go ahead and affirm that I think same-sex couples should be able to get married.”

“Maybe the critics are right. Maybe there's no escaping our great political divide, an endless clash of armies, and any attempts to alter the rules of engagement are futile. Or maybe the trivialization of politics has reached a point of no return, so that most people see it as just one more diversion, a sport, with politicians our paunch-bellied gladiators and those who bother to pay attention just fans on the sidelines: We paint our faces red or blue and cheer our side and boo their side, and if it takes a late hit or cheap shot to beat the other team, so be it, for winning is all that matters. But I don't think so. They are out there, I think to myself, those ordinary citizens who have grown up in the midst of all the political and cultural battles, but who have found a way-in their own lives, at least- to make peace with their neighbors, and themselves. ...I imagine they are waiting for a politics with the maturity to balance idealism and realism, to distinguish between what can and cannot be compromised, to admit the possibility that the other side might sometimes have a point. They don't always understand the arguments between right and left, conservative and liberal, but they recognize the difference between dogma and common sense, responsibility and irresponsibility, between those things that last and those that are fleeting. They are out there, waiting for Republicans and Democrats to catch up with them.”

“But know this America: we will meet them”

“Progress does not compel us to settle centuries-old debates about the role of government for all time — but it does require us to act in our time,”

“What’s certain is that I don’t need the stress.”

“I've now been in 57 states -- I think one left to go." --at a campaign event in Beaverton, Oregon” 

“in the state capital. But the years had also taken their toll. Some of it was just a function of my getting older, I suppose, for if you are paying attention,”

“In the Catholic school, when it came time to pray, I would pretend to close my eyes, then peek around the room. Nothing happened. No angels descended.”

“of the Harvard Law Review. In the wake of some modest publicity, I received an advance from a publisher and went”

“How could we judge other men until we had stood in their shoes?

“Kita menganggap keimanan sebagai sumber kenyamanan dan pemahaman, tetapi mendapati ekspresi kita akan hal itu justru menyebarkan perpecahan. Kita percaya, diri kita adalah orang-orang yang toleran meskipun berbagai ketegangan rasial, agama, dan kultural mencemari lanskap kehidupan kita. Dan alih-alih berusaha menyelesaikan atau memediasi konflik ini, politik kita justru mengipasinya, mengeksploitasinya, dan menjadikan kita terpecah-belah.”

“Even the smallest act of service, the simplest act of kindness, is a way to honor those we lost; a way to reclaim that spirit of unity that followed 9/11.”

“Moreover, I believe that part of America's genius has always been its ability to absorb newcomers, to forge a national identity out of the disparate lot that arrived on our shores. In this we've been aided by a Constitution that--despite being marred by the original sin of slavery--has at its very core the ideas of equal citizenship under the laws; and an economic system that, more than any other, has offered opportunity to all comers, regardless of status or title or rank.”

“the world was shrinking, sympathies changing;”

“Starting today, we must pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and begin again the work of remaking America.”b”