“In the unlikely story that is America, there has never been anything false about hope.”

“There are a whole lot of religious people in America, including the majority of Democrats. When we abandon the field of religious discourse—when we ignore the debate about what it means to be a good Christian or Muslim or Jew; when we discuss religion only in the negative sense of where or how it should not be practiced, rather than in the positive sense of what it tells us about our obligations toward one another; when we shy away from religious venues and religious broadcasts because we assume that we will be unwelcome—others will fill the vacuum. And those who do are likely to be those with the most insular views of faith, or who cynically use religion to justify partisan ends.”

“I don’t like politics much,” she said. “Why’s that?” “I don’t know. People always end up disappointed.”

“I was impatient in those days, busy with work and unrealized plans, and prone to see other people as unnecessary distractions.”

“The point I was making was not that Grandmother harbors any racial animosity. She doesn’t. But she is a typical white person…”

ilainya meragukan namun tidak mau menggunakan uang itu untuk melindungi pabrik-pabrik kimia yang sangat rapuh di pusat-pusat urban yang utama, menjadi semakin sulit bagi kita untuk meminta negara-negara lain menjaga pabrik-pabrik tenaga nuklir mereka.”

“Our journey is not complete until our gay brothers and sisters are treated like anyone else under the law for if we are truly created equal, then surely the love we commit to one another must be equal as well.

“What I could not support was "a dumb war, a rash war, a war based not on reason but on passion, not on principle but on politics"

“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.”

“For my grandfather, race wasn’t something you really needed to worry about anymore; if ignorance still held fast in certain locales, it was safe to assume that the rest of the world would be catching up soon.

“At the moment that we persuade a child, any child, to cross that threshold, that magic threshold into a library, we change their lives forever, for the better”

“We now live in a world where the most valuable skill you can sell is knowledge.”

“There's not a liberal America and a conservative America - there's the United States of America.”

“Our individualism has always been bound by a set of communal values, the glue upon which every healthy society depends.”

“I tossed a stick into the fire. “Attitudes aren’t so different in America,” I told Francis. “You are probably right,” he said. “But you see, a rich country like America can perhaps afford to be stupid.”