“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.”

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.

No citizen is a second class citizen in the city of Chicago. If my children are treated one way, every child is treated the same way.

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.

In millions of encounters each year between the police and the public, it may be too much to expect that every officer will always get it right. But it is not too much to expect that we can put the right safeguards in place to hold officers accountable when they get it wrong.

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.

Gratitude is the appreciation of what is, of life, of existence, of anybody and anything, for just the way it is.

What will carry us into living freedom is not the holding of attention so much as the holding of appreciation.

Spanking is a one handed round of applause in appreciation of a magnificent Ass.

An appreciation of words is so rare that everybody naturally thinks he possesses it, and this universal sentiment results in the misuse of a material whose beauty enriches the loving student beyond the dreams of avarice.

You never realise the value of something until it’s gone, hence why you should always appreciate the little things in life.

One minute I’m standing at Ronnie Scott’s getting a standing ovation and the next minute, I’m on a marble slab

Basically, as a kid I grew up to a lot of good music, and part of my appreciation for music, from being a small child, was appreciating Jamaican music.

I just appreciate still having the longevity that I’ve had in my career.