My first job as commander in chief is to keep the American people safe.
Keeping the people's government open is not a concession to me. Keeping vital service running and hundreds of thousands of Americans on the job is not something you 'give' to the other side.
I refuse to give in to the notion that the American people can't handle complicated information.
Nobody cares how tough your upbringing was. Nobody cares if you suffered some discrimination.
The terrorists do not speak for over a billion Muslims who reject their hateful ideology.
If we're trying to protect the American public, we should not put in place a travel ban.
Rand`s [Paul] a libertarian. He has a view of the world that I don`t share. He said that we shouldn`t have any troops in Iraq. He agreed with Obama that was a disaster. When there was a chance to do something constructive about Syria with a no-fly zone, he said we don`t need one.
Marco Rubio is one of those people. How does that work? How can you call him a con artist and dangerous, and object to all the controversial things he says, and then say, but I`m still going to vote for him? Come on, man.
Chancellor [Angela] Merkel is perhaps the only leader left among our closest allies that was there when I arrived. So in some ways we are now the veterans of many challenges over the last eight years.
I always say that campaigning and governing are two different things.
There was never a promise that race relations in America would be entirely resolved during my presidency or anybody's presidency. I mean, this has been a running thread - and - and fault line in American life and American politics since its founding.
You always hear about waste and abuse in Washington. And usually it doesn't mean much, because nobody ever finds where that waste and abuse is.
Unemployment is low, incomes are up, poverty is down - and that's going to be a lasting change.
My hope is that we can get a Republican-Democratic agreement on how we strengthen Social Security as well as looking at some of these other major expenditures that we have that we've got to deal with to make sure that we're not just leaving you guys with a mountain of debt.
In Europe, where the terrorist threat is probably greatest at the moment, the amount of information-sharing that's been taking place, the effectiveness of law enforcement across borders gives us the ability to protect ourselves while still being true to the basic precepts of our liberal democracies. I hope that that continues, and it is something that I think we should be worried about.
Sometimes they're nothing, sometimes they're something, sometimes there's a connection that years later may show up. All of this information is useful.
Its [Dreams from My Father] also a reflection about how we might start a better conversation in our democracy about how to solve problems, because it feels as if our political system - it just seems there is so much cynicism and negativity in our politics.
I think Donald Trump is going to try as best he can to make sure that he delivers not only to the people who voted for him but for the people at large and the good thing is that there are going to be elections coming up so there's a built-in incentive for him to try to do that.
To me the question right now is: How do I close that first three-quarters of the achievement gap, education gap, wealth gap? What gives me the best chance to do that? And I'm pretty darn sure that if America is a just society and treating people well right now, irrespective of past wrongs, that I'm going to close a big chunk of that gap. I've seen it.
What has made America the wealthiest, most successful country on Earth historically has been our commitment to education.
Oftentimes, misunderstandings and antagonism surfaces most strongly when economic times are tough. And that's not surprising. If everybody is working and feeling good and making money and buying a new house and a big screen TV, you're less worried about what other folks are doing.
As I reflect back on what's worked for me in this [presidential] office it's been that I've gotten people who maybe didn't believe in the process to get engaged. Ironically, I've even gotten the other side that maybe didn't believe in the process to get engaged.
We wouldn't even be where we are had it not been that 70% of Hispanics voted for President Obama, voted Democratic in the last election. That caused an epiphany in the Senate, that's for sure. So all of a sudden we have already passed comprehensive immigration reform in the Senate. That's a big victory.
Many of our ideas of democracy, so much of our literature and philosophy and science can be traced back to roots right here in Athens.
These kinds of tragedies [like shooting in Fort Lauderdale] have happened too often during the eight years that I've been president. The pain, the grief, the shock that they must be going through is enormous. I've asked me staff to reach out to the mayor down there and make sure that coordination between the state and local officials is what it should be. But I think we'll find out over the next 24 hours exactly how this happened and what motivated this individual.
