“My identity might begin with the fact of my race, but it didn't, couldn't end there.  At least that's what I would choose to believe.”

“I will cut taxes - cut taxes - for 95 percent of all working families, because, in an economy like this, the last thing we should do is raise taxes on the middle class.”

“What I would say to my successor is that it is important not just to shoot but to aim”

“In the face of our common dangers, in this wintr of our hardship, let us remember these timeless words. With hope and virtue, let us brave once more the icy currents, and endure what storms may come.”

“My main message is to the parents of Trayvon Martin. You know, if I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon.”

“These others, they have treated you badly. They are just too lazy to work for themselves.’ And you know what he would say to me? He would say, ‘How do you know that man does not need this small thing more than me?”

“I found god in myself and I loved her / I loved her fiercely

“First of all, I think it’s important for us to understand that the Fast and Furious program was a fieldinitiated program begun under the previous administration." Truth: The program was started in October 2009 and the strategy was decided at the Department of Justice in Washington

“They, they, they. That was the problem with people like Joyce. They talked about the richness of their multicultural heritage and it sounded real good, until you noticed that they avoided black people. It wasn't a matter of conscious choice, necessarily, just a matter of gravitational pull, the way integration always worked, a one-way street. The minority assimilated into the dominant culture, not the other way around. Only white culture could be neutral and objective. Only white culture could be nonracial, willing to adopt the occasional exotic into its ranks. Only white culture had individuals. And we, the half-breeds and the college-degreed, take a survey of the situation and think to ourselves, Why should we get lumped in with the losers if we don't want to? We become only so grateful to lose ourselves in the crowd, America's happy, faceless marketplace; and we're never so outraged as when a cabbie drives past us or the woman in the elevator clutches her purse, not so much because we're bothered by the fact that such indignities are what less fortunate coloreds have to put up with every single day of their lives-- although that's what we tell ourselves-- but because we're wearing a Brooks Brothers suit and speak impeccable English and yet have somehow been mistaken for an ordinary nigger. Don't know who I am? I'm an individual!”

“I've been fighting with Acorn, alongside Acorn, on issues you care about, my entire career.”

“Be conscious of God and speak always the truth,”

“And so the moment we persuade a child, any child, to cross that threshold into a library, we've changed their lives forever, and for the better. This is an enormous force for good.”

“Don't let your failures define you.”

“I believe a stronger sense of empathy would tilt the balance of our current politics in favor of those people who are struggling in this society. After all if they are like us, then their struggles are our own. If we fail to help we diminish ourselves.”

“Our challenges may be new. The instruments with which we meet them may be new. But those values upon which our success depends - honesty and hard work, courage and fair play, tolerance and curiosity, loyalty and patriotism - these things are old. These things are true. They have been the quiet force of progress throughout our history. What is demanded then is a return to these truths. What is required of us now is a new era of responsibility - a recognition, on the part of every American, that we have duties to ourselves, our nation, and the world, duties that we do not grudgingly accept but rather seize gladly, firm in the knowledge that there is nothing so satisfying to the spirit, so defining of our character, than giving our all to a difficult task.”