“I like being president because i get a cool house”

“Change we need”

“Religious freedom doesn't mean you can force others to live by your own beliefs.”

“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!”

“We are made for this moment, and we will seize it-so long as we seize it together.”

“the big house and the nice suits and the other things that our money culture says you should buy ... betrays a poverty of ambition.”

“We may come from different places and have different stories, but we share common hopes, and one very American dream.”

“The title of Reverend Wright’s sermon that morning was “The Audacity of Hope.”

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

“It was a creed written into the founding documents that declared the destiny of a nation. Yes we can. It was whispered by slaves and abolitionists as they blazed a trail toward freedom through the darkest of nights. Yes we can. It was sung by immigrants as they struck out from distant shores and pioneers who pushed westward against an unforgiving wilderness. Yes we can. It was the call of workers who organized; women who reached for the ballot; a President who chose the moon as our new frontier; and a King who took us to the mountaintop and pointed the way to the Promised Land. Yes we can to justice and equality. Yes we can to opportunity and prosperity. Yes we can heal this nation. Yes we can repair this world. Yes we can”

“A healthy, dose of guilt never hurt anybody. It’s what civilization was built on, guilt. A highly underrated emotion.”

“All of us - we should do everything we can to make sure this country lives up to our children's expectations.”

“If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun.”

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

“Strange how a single conversation can change you. Or maybe it only seems that way in retrospect.”