“The overwhelming number of police officers in Chicago are doing good work under difficult conditions. They put their lives on the line every day in situations none of us can fully comprehend or appreciate.”

As big a problem as gun violence is for Chicago, it is not beyond our ability to solve. Ending this string of tragedies is our top priority as a city. We are infusing our police department with the manpower, technology and training to meet this challenge head on.

I’ve never been in a place where winning has hurt the ability to do anything.

You have a burden going into any campaign when you’re raising money to fund that effort because there’s always a desire to spend more money than you have.

When people told me ‘It’s great to be here’, they meant at the house, not with me.

Under Superintendent Johnson’s leadership, our police department is on a path to earn the respect of every community in the City of Chicago.

Israel has a security concern involving geography. But geography does not have the same value it did in 1967.

A strong economy depends on a strong middle class, but George Bush has put the middle class in a hole, and John McCain has a plan to keep digging that hole with George Bush’s shovel.

As individuals, we will be judged in our lives by the totality of our actions. Not one thing will stand out. And I think that’s how we get judged by our colleagues and that’s how we get judged by the good lord.

It is one thing to train officers on fighting crime. It is a whole other thing to train them to build friendships and relationships, which are integral to fighting crime. This takes time, effort, and patience on the part of police officers.

We can define the rules of police-citizen engagement, but everyday decisions will always be made by men and women in uniform, on the street, in the community, under extreme pressure, in a dangerous world where guns easily fall into the wrong hands.

I believe the record I was allowed to help establish by the side of the president was important.

Because of the president’s leadership, every American will have access to affordable, quality health care.

I sometimes joke, Paula, even paranoid people have enemies.

For all the things that make Chicago great, for all the things that make us proud to call ourselves Chicagoans, the violence that is happening corrodes our core. It is not the Chicago we know and love.

In the White House, you can be on the pitcher’s mound or you can be in the catcher’s position. Put points on the board. Show people you can govern. Deliver on what you said you were going to deliver on.

When it comes to federal elections law, Tom DeLay and his special-interest friends live by one set of rules, and everyone else lives by a very different set.

My ears are open to all sorts of stuff. I appreciate some of the big electro house guys.I love their music but I also like a lot of the stuff coming out of the U.K. Future garage stuff. A lot of stuff like that.

If you deeply appreciate and love what creative people do and how they think, which is usually in unpredictable and irrational ways, then you can start to understand them. And finally, you can see inside their minds and DNA.

If you take my performance or my understanding of the role and my appreciation for story and then dress it in CGI, that I guess becomes an action film.

Liberty is not less a blessing, because oppression has so long darkened the mind that it can not appreciate it.

Emulation is a noble and just passion, full of appreciation.

To appreciate the success you have to have had the failures. You have to accept that it is a journey and its not just tomorrow or the next day or next year.

Chide a friend in private and praise him in public.

The crowds treat me like my last name. When I go onstage people usually stand up, I never ask them to, but they do. They stand up and they don’t know how much I appreciate it.