To those Americans whose support I have yet to earn, I may not have won your vote tonight, but I hear your voices. I need your help. And I will be your president, too.
That support has been so constant and gracious and loving. Michelle and I have never felt as if, at any stage, folks didn't have our backs. And as a consequence, I think that just spurred us on that much more to make us want to do the right thing, and do our best in the positions that we have.
Democracy is the healthful lifeblood which circulates through the veins and arteries, which supports the system, but which ought never to appear externally, and as the mere blood itself.
The human understanding, when any preposition has been once laid down... forces everything else to add fresh support and confirmation; and although more cogent and abundant instances may exist to the contrary, yet it either does not observe them or it despises them, or it gets rid of and rejects them by some distinction, with violent and injurious prejudice, rather than sacrifice the authority of its first conclusions.
I have 90 percent or 95 percent support in the African American community and it's not sort of "Well, he's black, so it's okay. We're not going to say anything even though we're seething." And I hang out with a lot of middle-aged black women, and they're not casual in their support of me. There's a lot of love forthcoming. Partly because they understand the constraints of this society. They know that this is hard.
A society like ours, which professes no one religion and has allowed all religions to decay, which indulges freedom to the point of license and individualism to the point of anarchy, needs all the support that responsible, cultivated homes can furnish. I hope your generation will provide a firmer shelter for civilized standards.
And we will pursue nations that provide aid or safe haven to terrorism. Every nation in every region now has a decision to make: Either you are with us or you are with the terrorists. From this day forward, any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism will be regarded by the United States as a hostile regime.
It is so little true that martyrs offer any support to the truth of a cause that I am inclined to deny that any martyr has ever had anything to do with the truth at all.
The silent colossal National Lie that is the support and confederate of all the tyrannies and shams and inequalities and unfairnesses that afflict the peoples — that is the one to throw bricks and sermons at.
I support the state, but not the state-run economy. The state should intervene only to create the conditions necessary for the private sector to thrive.