“There are too many senior citizens and good residents in Chicago who are sick and tired of having to walk several blocks out of their way when they leave their homes just to avoid the gangs and drug dealers on the street corner.”

I don’t want to go negative on Franklin Delano Roosevelt, but he didn’t pass an economic deal in the first 100 days. We have passed the largest Recovery Act in the history of the country.

Things happened there that I don’t think are the finest hours for anybody, whether it was a journalist, the legal system or, in that case of the political system, who would say that was an example of when Washington worked best.

Every policy officer is sworn to protect life, and, under the most extreme circumstances, to take life. It is a staggering responsibility that requires officers to make split second decisions.

Bob Rubin was opposed to signing the welfare bill. He’s not exactly what I call a flaming liberal.

I would like to run for the mayor of the city of Chicago. That has always been an aspiration of mine even when I was in the House of Representatives.

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

What is more comforting to the terrorists around the world: the failure to pass the 9/11 legislation because we lacked a majority of the majority,’ or putting aside partisan politics to enact tough new legislation with America’s security foremost in mind?

There was no blueprint or how-to manual for fixing a global financial meltdown, an auto crisis, two wars and a great recession, all at the same time.

Laquan McDonald is a wake-up call to all of us. It’s a reminder there’s a lot broken.

There’s no safe Republican district. You can run, but you cannot hide.

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.

Everybody knows they’re on the Obama team: There isn’t vice presidential vs. presidential division, there’s not a generational pull. People have internalized that this is a real moment in history.

The world for our law enforcement community has changed dramatically: everything from filling out paperwork to relationships with the community and how they think the narrative is in the media.

Banks are slowly but surely lending again, and never again will taxpayers foot the bill for Wall Street’s excesses. In case we forgot, that was the change we believed in. That was the change we fought for. That was the change President Obama delivered.

I join President Obama and the vast majority of Chicagoans who are tired of waiting for Washington to get serious about gun violence.

Fighting crime requires a partnership between the police and the community. And we all know that this partnership has been tested in Chicago. It is a problem that has festered in this city for decades.

To require a citizen to sign a loyalty oath is to destroy some of the loyalty he could otherwise claim, since any subsequent loyal behavior may then be attributed to the oath.

I say the phone records of law abiding citizens are none of their damn business!

In 1790, the nation which had fought a revolution against taxation without representation discovered that some of its citizens weren’t much happier about taxation with representation.

However energetically society in general may strive to make all the citizens equal and alike, the personal pride of each individual will always make him try to escape from the common level, and he will form some inequality somewhere to his own profit.

The Constitution was not written to restrain the citizen’s behavior, it was written to restrain the government’s behavior.

If there’s a silver bullet in the battle to recapture Albany, it is the re-engagement of our citizens. This capital has become a physical metaphor for the isolation and alienation of our people.

The American people, North and South, went into the [Civil] war as citizens of their respective states, they came out as subjects … what they thus lost they have never got back.

The health of a democratic society may be measured by the quality of functions performed by private citizens.