Barack Obama

To avoid being mistaken for a sellout, I chose my friends carefully. The more politically active black students. The foreign students. The Chicanos. The Marxist professors and structural feminists and punk-rock performance poets.

Issues are never simple. One thing I'm proud of is that very rarely will you hear me simplify the issues.

In America, there's a failure to appreciate Europe's leading role in the world.

I think same sex couples should be able to get married.

What Washington needs is adult supervision.

I don't oppose all wars. What I am opposed to is a dumb war. What I am opposed to is a rash war.

We want everybody to act like adults, quit playing games, realize that it's not just my way or the highway.

We can still see God in other people and do our best to help them find their own grace. So that’s what I strive to do and pray to do every day.

Americans... still believe in an America where anything's possible - they just don't think their leaders do.

If you're looking for the safe choice, you shouldn't be supporting a black guy named Barack Obama to be the next leader of the free world.

We have an obligation and a responsibility to be investing in our students and our schools. We must make sure that people who have the grades, the desire and the will, but not the money, can still get the best education possible.

I've got two daughters. 9 years old and 6 years old. I am going to teach them first of all about values and morals. But if they make a mistake, I don't want them punished with a baby.

It's time to fundamentally change the way that we do business in Washington. To help build a new foundation for the 21st century, we need to reform our government so that it is more efficient, more transparent, and more creative. That will demand new thinking and a new sense of responsibility for every dollar that is spent.

And I will do everything that I can as long as I am President of the United States to remind the American people that we are one nation under God, and we may call that God different names but we remain one nation.

I believe marriage is between a man and a woman. I am not in favor of gay marriage. But when you start playing around with constitutions, just to prohibit somebody who cares about another person, it just seems to me that's not what America's about. Usually, our constitutions expand liberties, they don't contract them.

If you’re walking down the right path and you’re willing to keep walking, eventually you’ll make progress.

My family, frankly, they weren't folks who went to church every week. My mother was one of the most spiritual people I knew but she didn't raise me in the church, so I came to my Christian faith later in life and it was because the precepts of Jesus Christ spoke to me in terms of the kind of life that I would want to lead.

It probably wouldn't be good for our economy for a bunch of these jobs to come back because, there's no way that people could be getting paid a living wage on some of these jobs - at least in order to be competitive in an international setting.

And Joe Biden, thank you for being the best Vice President I could ever hope for.

This is my last election. After my election, I have more flexibility.

It is very important for I think those of us who desperately want peace, who see war as, at some level, a break-down, a manifestation of human weakness, to understand that sometimes it’s also necessary – and you know, to – to be able to balance two ideas at the same time; that we are constantly striving for peace, we are doubling up on our diplomacy, we are going to actively engage, we are going to try to see the world through other people’s eyes and not just our own.