Losing the PR battles, particularly about healthcare, translated into losing his Democratic majorities in Congress, beginning with a Republican landslide in the midterm election of 2010.

You can’t let your failures define you. You have to let your failures teach you.

Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we've been waiting for. We are the change that we seek.

Keep exploring. Keep dreaming. Keep asking why. Don’t settle for what you already know. Never stop believing in the power of your ideas, your imagination, your hard work to change the world.

When ignorant folks want to advertise their ignorance, you don't really have to do anything, you just let them talk.

Just because we have the best hammer does not mean that every problem is a nail.

Change is never easy, but always possible.

Don’t ever let anybody tell you that your efforts don’t matter or that your voice doesn’t count. Don’t ever believe that you can’t make a difference. You have.

Where you are right now doesn't have to determine where you'll end up.

Learning to stand in somebody else's shoes, to see through their eyes, that's how peace begins. And it's up to you to make that happen. Empathy is a quality of character that can change the world.

If somebody is different from you, that's not something you criticize, that's something that you appreciate.

There are two kinds of idiots - those who don't take action because they have received a threat, and those who think they are taking action because they have issued a threat.

We will not let terrorists change our way of life; we will not live in fear; and we will not undermine the civil liberties that characterize our Democracy.

The jury is supposed to be twelve peers, but technically that would mean every single person on the jury should have Asperger's syndrome, because then they'd really understand me.

Love is a secret society, a community for two.

We were just a gaggle of kids, and everybody played together and had a good time. You know how kids can be completely horrible; abusive but fun. But anyway, it was a nice childhood.

Maybe they should go back to wooden sticks.

I study how governments seek to stifle and control online dissent.

When I'm singing I try not be a singer with a capital S. I just try to get it out so I feel comfortable with it.

I love that Toronto is demonstrating that a big, highly diverse, multicultural city can actually work and work well, if its residents have the attitude of Torontonians.