If there are occasions when my grape turned into a raisin and my joy bell lost its resonance, please forgive me. Charge it to my head and not to my heart.

We must all learn a good lesson – how to live together.

If the states had to vote on slavery, we would have lost the vote.

I was extended secret service protection during my presidential run in 1984, when I received the most death threats ever made toward a candidate.

Leadership cannot just go along to get along. Leadership must meet the moral challenge of the day.

If the American people in a matter of months can love the people of Kuwait, whom they have not seen, they can love the people of our nation’s capital just as well.

We have to judge politicians by their cumulative score. In one innings they make a great catch, in another they drop the ball. In one they score a home run, in another they strike out....

I am not a perfect servant. I am a public servant doing my best against the odds. As I develop and serve, be patient. God is not finished with me yet.

Life has its dimensions in the mysterious.

In many ways Africa subsidised America and Europe’s development.

The American people on the ground need a clearer, stronger, Lyndon B. Johnson-type voice from their president.

Watch the walls come down, whether it’s in the South or on Wall Street. When the walls come down, what do we find? More markets, more talent, more capital and growth. Which means that the...

For me, Barack Obama’s election was a milestone of the most extraordinary kind. On the day he was elected I felt such hope in my heart. I thought we were seeing the beginning of a...

People always grow and mature.

There’s a full-court press to put down an uprising around Ferguson, but no preparation for lifting up the people there.

Deliberation and debate is the way you stir the soul of our democracy.

It is a historical error for those who were not there to just refer to August 28th as ‘I Have a Dream’ speech day. That is a real disservice to those who were there. It...

Music of all arts should be expansive and inclusive.

When the doors of opportunity swing open, we must make sure that we are not too drunk or too indifferent to walk through.

We must not measure greatness from the mansion down, but from the manger up.

Obama used to be a community organizer. He knows how to build communities.

Conservatives and liberals can find common ground.

Many kids come out of college, they have a credit card and a diploma. They don’t know how to buy a house or a car or health insurance or life insurance. They do not know...

People internalize, from the jail to student loan debt, to credit card debt, to unemployment to the whole collective. It manifests itself in many ways, in people’s home lives, domestic stuff.

So many bright stars, bright in life, burn out quickly.

Those who have the most wealth and the most property, their children have the first, the best, and the most.

There is no power in cynicism. There is no forward thrust in cynicism.

Those companies that don’t see the black and brown communities are missing, out of their closed eye, talent, which leads to money and growth. When baseball, football and basketball couldn’t see the field, they missed...

I remember being taught my place.

Success needs no explanation. Failure does not have one that matters.

In tough economic times, desperate people do desperate things, and the abortion rate goes up.

Statehood for the District of Columbia is the most important civil rights and social justice issue in America today.

Fighting disparities is very significant.

While I’ve spent a lot of quality time with my children, perhaps it’s not been enough.

I came to the conclusion that in order to end racial barriers, I needed to run for the office of the president and put forth an agenda of social justice and world peace. In addition,...

So much talent comes from the base of poverty and those in the margins. You limit the base, you miss too much talent.

You can be out of slavery and have the right to vote, but unless you have access to capital, industry and technology, you can’t fulfill your dreams.

Great things happen in small places. Jesus was born in Bethlehem. Jesse Jackson was born in Greenville.

To allow injustice and inequality invites a Ferguson to your community. We must stand together, black, white, brown, red, and yellow and fight for justice and equality for all. It’s the only way to avoid...

We’ve been so preoccupied with getting the government to behave in a fair and democratic way, we were not able to focus on the private sector where most of the jobs are, where most of...

No one should negotiate their dreams. Dreams must be free to fly high. No government, no legislature, has a right to limit your dreams. You should never agree to surrender your dreams.

There’s great disparity between who goes to college and who goes to jail. Who lives long and who dies prematurely, is the defining issue of our time. And I submit to you, there’s a significant...

The relationship between the prophet and the President, the priest and the President, is a sacred one.

I have worked hard to build relationships between Jewish people and black people.

In many ways, history is marked as ‘before’ and ‘after’ Rosa Parks. She sat down in order that we all might stand up, and the walls of segregation came down.

Many have fought for and even lost their lives to end segregation, to win the right to vote. It disappoints me to now have to cajole people to register and to vote.

The great responsibility that we have today is to put the poor and the near poor back on front of the American agenda.

Those who write the editorials and those who write the columns, they simply are unaccountable. They’re free to impose their cultural politics in the name of freedom of the press.

When you create more small businesses, you create small entrepreneurship. Out of that comes self-determination and employment.

We blacks were the first people embracing Obama, long before the people at expensive fundraisers were supporting him. We gave him his first love, 96 percent of blacks voted for him in 2008. Yet today...