"If you want to be first, you have to be first in service."

Barack Obama spoke to a standing-room-only crowd of supporters in East St. Louis about his visit to the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Ala., where a bomb exploded on Sept. 15, 1963, killing four young black girls. He said that experience helped put his post-Democratic Convention status as a rising star in perspective.

It's easy to get swept up in the hoopla, to read your name in the papers and to see yourself on TV," he said. "And all of that is fun. But standing in that church in Birmingham, Ala., I realized and I reminded myself that the reason you get into public service is not for yourself. It's not about your family. It's not about your vanity. It's not about your ambition. If you want to be first, you have to be first in service.

from St. Louis Post-Dispatch