“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.”

“You can put lipstick on a pig. It's still a pig.”

“Sometimes you can’t worry about hurt. Sometimes you worry only about getting where you have to go.” We”

“We don't ask you to believe in our ability to bring change, rather, we ask you to believe in yours.”

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

“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.”

“Change won't come from the top, Change will come from mobilized grassroots.”

“Hope -- Hope in the face of difficulty. Hope in the face of uncertainty. The audacity of hope! In the end, that is God’s greatest gift to us...A belief in things not seen. A belief that there are better days ahead.”

“That’s probably what had drawn me to Regina, the way she made me feel like I didn’t have to lie.”

“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.”

“If my father hadn’t exactly disappointed me, he remained something unknown, something volatile and vaguely threatening

“Indeed, it's not a stretch to say that most voters no longer choose their representatives; instead, representatives choose their voters.”

“Ive been to 50 of these 60 US states”

“well as programs like the GI Bill that made a college education available to millions, government”

“Today I say to you that the challenges we face are real. They are serious and they are many. They will not be met easily or in a short span of time. But know this, America — they will be met.”