J. D. Vance

"At a pivotal time in my life, Barack Obama gave me hope that a boy who grew up like me could still achieve the most important of my dreams. For that, I'll miss him and the example he set."

"Faith gave me the belief that there was somebody looking out for me, that there was a hopeful future on the other side of all the things I was going through."

"For decades, scholars have studied the ways in which implicit biases affect how we perceive other people in this multiethnic society of ours. The data consistently shows that about 90 percent of us possess some implicit prejudices - and, unsurprisingly, people typically favor their own group."

"I almost failed out of high school. I nearly gave in to the deep anger and resentment harbored by everyone around me... Whatever talents I have, I almost squandered until a handful of loving people rescued me."

"I once interviewed my grandma for a class project about the Second World War. After 70 years filled with marriage, children, grandchildren, death, poverty and triumph, the thing about which she was unquestionably the proudest and most excited was that she and her family did their part during the war."

"It's amazing to think how powerful of a force optimism and hope can be. It's the thing that saves me. I believed that I lived in the greatest country in the world. I still believe that, and consequently, I believed that I had a chance, even though things around me were absolutely crazy and difficult."

"People don't want to believe they have to speak like Obama or Clinton to participate meaningfully in politics, because most of us don't speak like Obama or Clinton."

"To serve in the modern military - or to be the uncle, parent or sibling of one who does - is to treat the necessary service and sacrifice of war with a sacred honor. In my community, we pile into cars and drive hundreds of miles to watch our children's graduation from basic training."

"Trump's biggest failure as a political leader is that he sees the worst in people, and he encourages the worst in people."

"Undoubtedly, church fish fries and picnics help build social cohesion. It was at my dad's medium-size evangelical church - my first real exposure to a sustained religious community - that I first saw people of different races and classes worshiping together."

"We spend our way to the poorhouse. We buy giant TVs and iPads. Our children wear nice clothes thanks to high-interest credit cards and payday loans. We purchase homes we don't need, refinance them for more spending money, and declare bankruptcy, often leaving them full of garbage in our wake. Thrift is inimical to our being."

"We think of the Marine Corps as a military outfit, and of course it is, but for me, the U.S. Marine Corps was a four-year crash course in character education. It taught me how to make a bed, how to do laundry, how to wake up early, how to manage my finances. These are things my community didn't teach me."

"We're very good at talking about the individual in American politics and excellent at talking about the government. But we have little ability to even acknowledge everything that exists in the middle, and given how influential politics is on every other part of our life, I think that failure of discourse is pretty corrosive to our overall culture."

"When I started law school in 2010, I would have called myself an atheist. When I graduated law school in 2013, I was exploring my faith again. A lot changed in those three years."

"When people read 'Breitbart' every single day and convince themselves that Barack Obama is a foreign terrorist, that is not a problem of government. That is a problem of community failure, and we have to recognize that."