Quotes from Rahm Emanuel

Everybody knows they're on the Obama team: There isn't vice presidential vs. presidential division, there's not a generational pull. People have internalized that this is a real moment in history.

Every policy officer is sworn to protect life, and, under the most extreme circumstances, to take life. It is a staggering responsibility that requires officers to make split second decisions.

Representative Willis has introduced a bill, modeled after a Chicago law, to hold gun stores accountable for flooding our streets with weapons. Thousands of guns recovered by the Chicago Police Department can be traced back to just a handful of stores.

When I talk to Chicagoans who live in our most violence-prone neighborhoods, they do not hate the police. In fact, they tell me they want more cops and fewer gangs. They do not want more officers in cars just driving through their communities. They want officers on the beat in their neighborhoods.

In millions of encounters each year between the police and the public, it may be too much to expect that every officer will always get it right. But it is not too much to expect that we can put the right safeguards in place to hold officers accountable when they get it wrong.

The fact is, Bush's war policy has failed. It's failed! Who better to say so than Jack Murtha?

Today, because of President Obama's courage, kids can stay on their parent's plan until they are 26. Insurers cannot kick you off your policy because you have hit your limit. They will not be able to deny you because you have a pre-existing condition.

For all the things that make Chicago great, for all the things that make us proud to call ourselves Chicagoans, the violence that is happening corrodes our core. It is not the Chicago we know and love.

Under Superintendent Johnson's leadership, our police department is on a path to earn the respect of every community in the City of Chicago.

Because of the president's leadership, every American will have access to affordable, quality health care.

Bob Rubin was opposed to signing the welfare bill. He's not exactly what I call a flaming liberal.

I can't imagine being mayor and not having had the experience working for President Clinton or President Obama, or, for that matter, working in Congress. On the other hand, I think I would have been a better adviser had I been mayor first. If I had had this job first, I could have seen the implications of things I was doing.

In the White House, you can be on the pitcher's mound or you can be in the catcher's position. Put points on the board. Show people you can govern. Deliver on what you said you were going to deliver on.

I do not believe the government has the right to investigate somebody's private life.

It is one thing to train officers on fighting crime. It is a whole other thing to train them to build friendships and relationships, which are integral to fighting crime. This takes time, effort, and patience on the part of police officers.

Whose leadership, whose judgment, whose values do you want in the White House when that crisis lands like a thud on the Oval Office desk?

What is more comforting to the terrorists around the world: the failure to pass the 9/11 legislation because we lacked a majority of the majority,' or putting aside partisan politics to enact tough new legislation with America's security foremost in mind?

Fighting crime requires a partnership between the police and the community. And we all know that this partnership has been tested in Chicago. It is a problem that has festered in this city for decades.

To deal with what you have to deal with as mayor or president, there has to be an overriding psychological or professional or emotional gratification that would let you go through all the angst.

I've never been in a place where winning has hurt the ability to do anything.

I don't want to go negative on Franklin Delano Roosevelt, but he didn't pass an economic deal in the first 100 days. We have passed the largest Recovery Act in the history of the country.

You have a burden going into any campaign when you're raising money to fund that effort because there's always a desire to spend more money than you have.

I see city finances within the context of an economic strategy... We are going to solve our financial problems by growing the economy, and I have rejected some corners that have called for a slash-and-burn approach, and I've rejected others who have called for raising taxes and leaving government as is.

When President Obama entered the White House, the economy was in a free-fall. The auto industry: on its back. The banks: frozen up. More than three million Americans had already lost their jobs. And America's bravest, our men and women in uniform, were fighting what would soon be the longest wars in our history.