What they said

‘Lord, in the memory of all the saints who from their labors rest, and in the joy of a new beginning, we ask you to help us work for that day when black will not be asked to get in back, when brown can stick around … when yellow will be mellow … when the red man can get ahead, man; and when white will embrace what is right. That all those who do justice and love mercy say Amen.”

Rev. Joseph Lowery,

In the benediction

‘It’s nice, it’s natural, it’s comfortable. It’s his time.”

Denzel Washington

Actor

‘I didn’t think it was his greatest speech. … There was a little more enumeration of his agenda in very concrete terms, instead of inspirational rhetoric throughout.”

Don Baer

Clinton White House speechwriter

‘For years and years and years, she’ll hear she was a part of it.”

Tina Suggs, 40,

Brought her 8-month-old daughter Malia — named for Obama’s older daughter — from New Orleans

‘I just thought, you know, this is as close to a secular church as you can get.”

Morgan Schoerner, 40

Editor from South Pasadena, Calif.

‘It’s good to be associated with the greatest president of the greatest nation on Earth. And it’s very special to see a black man leading whites.”

Fred Orina

Resident of Nairobi, Kenya

‘It kind of symbolizes what Obama is all about. And I don’t have enough hair for more than one word.”

Doug Jennings

State legislator from Bennettsville, S.C., had the “hope” shaved into his short hair

‘He gave a somber speech, but along the way he provided a sense of hope. And the combination of both suggests that he really knows what the issues ahead are.”

Gerald Shuster

Expert in rhetoric at the University

of Pittsburgh