We're a nation of hope, of high ideals.

Athletes are still exploited. If they blow out their knee, if they somehow don't meet the mandates of a coach, they lose their scholarship. They don't get their degree.

We're heading towards a perception tipping point where it's going to soon become a foregone conclusion that not only has Newark turned a corner, but it's way down the right road.

The fact that Newark is having poetry festivals and peace conferences - all of these things are building an undeniable thesis that our city is making incredible strides forward.

We know that there will never be a great Newark unless there is a great public school system for our city.

More than anything, we must do better for our children's education.

The mayoral mentality is incredibly valuable. I don't want to lose that.

If we want a great nation, we have to change it ourselves.

We should be ashamed of ourselves. We inherited the best infrastructure on the globe from our grandparents... and we've taken that inheritance and squandered it.

In Newark, we see a problem and want to seize it, but we run up against the wall of state government, the wall of federal government that does not have the flexibility or doesn't see problems, even. At the federal level, it's often a zero-sum game: If you win, I lose. At the local level, it's just not local that. It's win-win-win.

I love mayors.

Minorities do not believe this country will give them a fair shake.

If you grew up where I grew up, you would experience a very different criminal justice system than Camden, New Jersey.

My weakness in life is two men who seduce me all the time - named Ben & Jerry.

As a guy that had been told to drop out many times as I was coming up, I don't think you should tell any candidate about what they should do and what decisions they should make.

Marriage equality is not a choice. It is a legal right.

Equal protection under the law - for race, religion, gender or sexual orientation - should not be subject to the most popular sentiments of the day.

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.

Do not forget from whence you've come.

My grandmother from Iowa, she is dancing in Heaven at the prospect that the next president of the United States is going to be Hillary Rodham Clinton.

It's incredibly flattering to be a U.S. senator, which I want to stay at for a long time.

This world has a way of trying to homogenize you. Trying to sanitize you. Trying to scrub you of your unique divine genius. This world wants to make you regular.

Stand in a way that you are always empowering people to join in, because the only way to be truly successful is not to succeed as an individual, but to succeed as a part of a community, of a country.

I believe that living life with a definiteness of purpose, with having a central focus, is essential to success.