“Gun violence in Chicago is unacceptable. It threatens everything we have done together and all of the progress we have made in other areas.”

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.

The American people want change. They want big ideas, big reform.

I do not believe the government has the right to investigate somebody’s private life.

You never let a serious crisis go to waste. And what I mean by that it’s an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before.

We invoke the sacrifices of our fallen heroes in the abstract, but we seldom take time to thank them individually.

Rather than doing the kind of fact-checking that normally goes with a story, you ran with certain stories for not wanting to get beat. There’s a pressure that exists in your profession. I would be surprised in any honest exchange that you say that doesn’t exist.