We're not called to be a tolerant nation. We're called to be a nation of love.
I don't know what God has planned for me or you or anyone, but I do know that in darkness, you discover an indistinguishable light.
People who get comfortable in their spirit miss what they were created for. They were created to magnify the glory of the world.
If we're concerned about climate change as a country, we should have policies that make sure our great-grandchildren have a planet that's healthy and strong.
After Yale Law School, I was proud to try to live up to my parents' example and began my career working for The Urban Justice Center in the streets of Newark, organizing residents to fight for better housing conditions.
My story starts with my dad, a black boy born to a single mother in a small town in North Carolina. It starts with my parents meeting in Washington, D.C., in the '60s, at a time of incredible activism.
I have got the job of my dreams.
I respect and value the ideals of rugged individualism and self-reliance. But rugged individualism didn't defeat the British, it didn't get us to the moon, build our nation's highways, or map the human genome. We did that together. This is the high call of patriotism.
My family is no different from yours. We may be different from the geography that we come from. Some of you all may pray differently than I do, some of you all may be from a different ethnicity, but we all have the same story.
Our platform calls for a balanced deficit reduction plan where the wealthy pay their fair share. And when your country is in a costly war, with our soldiers sacrificing abroad and our nation facing a debt crisis at home, being asked to pay your fair share isn't class warfare - it's patriotism.
The richness of America is that we are diverse. We're not Sweden. We're not Norway. We are a great American experiment. And as soon as we start trying to forget race or turn our back on race, number one, we don't confront the real racial realities that still persist.
Patriotism is love of country. But you can't love your country without loving your countrymen and countrywomen. We don't always have to agree, but we must empower each other, we must find the common ground, we must build bridges across our differences to pursue the common good.
If we want a great nation, we have to change it ourselves.
I was born after the Civil Rights Movement. I never saw Martin Luther King alive.
I'd gladly take a grenade, if it meant saving Newark.
I've been wrong on everything about Trump; I've been wrong about everything on the Republican side of the ledger. But allow me - with that caveat - to made the prediction that Donald Trump will not be the president of the United States. It just will not happen.
Kids born into certain ZIP codes will most likely have certain educational outcomes. And we've got to end that. If we end that, we explode economic development.
There was a small point in my life in law school, right before I moved to Newark, when I didn't know what I wanted to do, and I felt so lost.
My dad set a clear model for me for what manhood was all about.
We need to look at the totality of the things that we're labeling as violent and really examine whether we need to have some more proportionality in terms of the punishment fitting the crime that's done. The bright line that we have right now, between violent and nonviolent, does not account for shades of gray.
You should be able to afford health care for your family. You should be able to retire with dignity and respect. And you should be able to give your children the kind of education that allows them to dream even bigger, go even farther and accomplish even more than you could ever imagine.
Are there any monuments built to demagogues? I just don't think so.
Newark faces real challenges.
I have never articulated a specific number, but I think a nation as great as we are, that professes to favor freedom and liberty, that we would find a way to evidence that in our criminal justice system by achieving what we know we can achieve: a reduction in crime, a reduction in taxpayer expense, and a reduction in the prison population.
Life's too short not to try different things and to see what works for you and your body.
This is our history - from the Transcontinental Railroad to the Hoover Dam, to the dredging of our ports and building of our most historic bridges - our American ancestors prioritized growth and investment in our nation's infrastructure.
You don't have to be one of those people that accepts things as they are. Every day, take responsibility for changing them right where you are.
As a vegetarian eating a plateful of eggs, I found myself in this weird place where I didn't want to think about where those eggs came from. I didn't want to think about the treatment of the animals who produced those eggs. When I find myself trying not to think about things, it seems to me that I'm practicing avoidance.
When your country is in a costly war, with our soldiers sacrificing abroad and our nation facing a debt crisis at home, being asked to pay your fair share isn't class warfare - it's patriotism.
I thought that Donald Trump's ascendancy would end when he attacked John McCain, saying he's not a war hero. I found that shocking, for him to say that.
If we are going to do big things in our country, we're going to have to think about better ways working across our differences.
So many great movements didn't succeed the first time, but people kept trying and trying and trying.
Do not forget from whence you've come.
I just know that I'm innovative. I'm a quick thinker... In Washington, I just want to be a senator who finds a way to drive change and not figure out a way to conform.
I was born after the Civil Rights Movement.
Equal protection under the law - for race, religion, gender or sexual orientation - should not be subject to the most popular sentiments of the day.