No doubt the White House thinks the American people know Obama's story. But since the Inauguration we've seen only the president's present: his perfect family his Ivy League elegance his effortless mastery of complex issues. We never see him sweat. And we forget that he ever had to struggle.

My family's lineage is five generations of artists who never made it.

Being a Barrymore didn't help me other than giving me a great sense of pride and a strange spiritual sense that I felt OK about having the passion to act. It made sense because my whole family had done it and it helped rationalise it for me.

I don't see how the party that says it's the party of the family is going to adopt an immigration policy which destroys families that have been here a quarter century.

The steady expansion of welfare programs can be taken as a measure of the steady disintegration of the Negro family structure over the past generation in the United States.

One thing that was passed on from generation to generation in my family over seven generations in 200 years was never give up. That's the way we live.

It is time to return to core values time to get back to basics to self-discipline and respect for the law to consideration for the others to accepting responsibility for yourself and your family - and not shuffling it off on other people and the state.

But with the steady disintegration of the family in modern society over the last century the role of the school in bridging the gap has become vital!

The promise of America has always been that if you worked hard had the right values took some risks that there was an opportunity to build a better life for your family and for your next generation.

Happy is said to be the family which can eat onions together. They are for the time being separate from the world and have a harmony of aspiration.

It's very strange that most people don't care if their knowledge of their family history only goes back three generations.

The love of family and the admiration of friends is much more important than wealth and privilege.

When you look around right now Nashville is kind of going through another changing of guard you're watching the Martina McBrides and the Faith Hills and all of them that have been the big stars for the last however many years and the next generation is coming in: Miranda Lambert Carrie Underwood those girls.

Christianity emerged from the religion of Israel. Or rather it has as its background a persistent strain in that religion. To that strain Christians have looked back and rightly as the preparation in history for their faith.

In light of these facts Republicans have put forth a variety of proposals to make Social Security remain solvent for future generations. But up to this point Democrats have chosen to oppose our good faith efforts and insist that indeed there is no problem.

I've been speaking at churches for years as well as juvenile jails rehabs and hospitals and I always talk about my faith. That is a declaration of my relationship with God.

Faith is an act of rational choice which determines us to act as if certain things were true and in the confident expectation that they will prove to be true.

For the record I believe elected officials should talk about faith. Our founders believed the moral principles of faith were indispensable to our nation's survival. The Declaration of Independence mentions God four times.

What is faith? If you believe something because you have evidence for it or rational argument that is not faith. So faith seems to be believing something despite the absence of evidence or rational argument for it.

Moderation is part of faith so those who accuse Muslim schools of fostering fanaticism should learn a bit more about Islam.

I think there ought to be a strict separation or wall built between our religious faith and our practice of political authority in office. I don't think the President of the United States should extoll Christianity if he happens to be a Christian at the expense of Judaism Islam or other faiths.

The separation of church and state is a source of strength but the conscience of our nation does not call for separation between men of state and faith in the Supreme Being.

The meme for blind faith secures its own perpetuation by the simple unconscious expedient of discouraging rational inquiry.

Faith is the highest passion in a human being. Many in every generation may not come that far but none comes further.