"I'm not going to present myself as the person who is going to resolve racial tension or racial inequality in this country -- that's not the story I'm telling. [...]
What I am saying is that we have addressed these issues in my community. We have learned from that. [...]
I'm passionately committed to bringing about, in my lifetime, a world where a black person and a white person pulled over by a police officer feels the exact same thing -- and that that's a feeling not of fear, but a feeling of safety."
“Freedom is at stake if there is a veil of mistrust between community members and officers sworn to keep them safe.”
"I don't even view us as having opponents so much as competitors. You would be surprised how often we [democratic candidates] are in dialogue with each other. [...] We might as well carpool."
“The next president has got to establish a higher bar for what it will take to deploy military force. [...]
[It should only be deployed] when there's a core life or death interest in the homeland where our security is at stake. Or when it is a legitimate part of an international action, when, for example, an ally is attacked. And in both of those cases, even then, when there is no alternative.”
“I believe that the right of a woman to make her own decisions about her own reproductive health and her own body is a national right. I believe it is an American freedom.
If it's that late in your pregnancy, then it's almost – by definition – you've been expecting to carry it to term. We're talking about women who have perhaps chosen a name. Women who have purchased a crib and families that then get the most devastating medical news of their lifetime, something about the health or the life of the mother that forces them to make an impossible, unthinkable choice. [...] And the bottom line is [...] that decision is not going to be made any better medically or morally because the government is dictating how that decision should be made.”
"You know, we talk a lot about elevating the dialogue, so I guess the fact that I inspired [President Trump] to make a literary reference, maybe for the first time, is something."
“If you’re turned off, as I am, by the political behavior of Chick-fil-A or their executives — if that leaves a bad taste in your mouth, so to speak, and you decide not to shop there, I’d certainly get it and I’d support that. But the reality is we, I think, sometimes slip into a sort of virtue signaling in some cases where we’re not really being consistent. I mean, what about all the other places we get our chicken from?”