America has seen enough of a handful of people growing rich at the cost of our nation descending into economic crisis.

We choose forward. We choose inclusion. We choose growing together. We choose American economic might and muscle, standing strong on the bedrock of the American ideal: a strong, empowered and ever-growing middle class.

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.

My father passed away a few days before my election. This man, an African American born to a poor single mother in 1936 in the South, would worry in the last years of his life that he had better life chances when he was growing up than a young man born in the same circumstances would have today.

We think we can contribute something toward the improvement of public education in our country.

The best teacher is an audience. The ideal performance is when that group of strangers sitting in the dark gets energy from the group in the light and sends energy back to us. When it really works, a perfect circle is formed.

August Wilson is the one writer that writes about men like my father, who had a fifth grade education, who was a janitor at McDonald's.

I add this, that rational ability without education has oftener raised man to glory and virtue, than education without natural ability.