The decent, strong person had to do decent, strong things like love unlovable people and keep peace even when it wasn't easy.

When the good Lord put a burden on his heart, he listened.

The greatest food for the greatest number—that's my slogan. At a time of desperate public need, it's our duty to sacrifice our luxurious tastes and eat our way back to prosperity by adapting ourselves to the simple, wholesome foodstuff on which the peoples of the Orient have so nobly subsisted for centuries. There's a great deal that we could learn from the peoples of the Orient.

another tradition to politics, a tradition (of politics) that stretched from the days of the country's founding to the glory of the civil rights movement, a tradition based on the simple idea that we have a stake in one another, and that what binds us together is greater than what drives us apart, and that if enough people believe in the truth of that proposition and act on it, then we might not solve every problem, but we can get something meaningful done.

It is the kindness to take in a stranger when the levees break; the selflessness of workers who would rather cut their hours than see a friend lose their job which sees us through our darkest hours. It is the firefighter's courage to storm a stairway filled with smoke, but also a parent's willingness to nurture a child, that finally decides our fate.

In my daughters I see her every day, her joy, her capacity for wonder. I won't try to describe how deeply I mourn her passing still. I know that she was the kindest, most generous spirit I have ever known, and that what is best in me I owe to her.

In return, I gave him a sounding board for his frustrations.

The biggest deficit that we have in our society and in the world right now is an empathy deficit. We are in great need of people being able to stand in somebody else's shoes and see the world through their eyes.

The people back home, they didn't even know anyone else who had ridden in an airplane before. So they expected everything from him. 'Ah, Barack, you are a big shot now. You should give me something. You should help me.' Always these pressures from family. And he couldn't say no, he was so generous. You

Once I found an issue enough people cared about, I could take them into action. With enough actions, I could start to build power. Issues

I couldn't rid myself of the sense that Roy was in danger somehow, that old demons were driving him toward an abyss, and that if only I was a better brother, my intervention would prevent his fall.

This dual sense of individual advancement and collective decline that I thought accounted for some of the most troubling attitudes I heard in some conversations.