If you're a single mother with two children, which is the toughest job in America as far as I'm concerned, and you're working hard to put food on your family.
Let us be different in our homes. Let us realize that along with food, shelter, and clothing, we have another obligation to our children, and that is to affirm their "rightness." The whole world will tell them what's wrong with them--out loud and often. Our job is to let our children know what's right about them.
I am absolutely certain that generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless; this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal; this was the moment when we ended a war and secured our nation and restored our image as the last, best hope on earth. This was the moment - this was the time - when we came together to remake this great nation so that it may always reflect our very best selves and our highest ideals.
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 use a different style if I'm speaking to a big crowd; I can gin up folks pretty well. But when I'm in these town hall settings, my job is not to throw them a lot of red meat. I want to give them a sense of my thought process.
I [have big plans]. Promoting freedom around the world, particularly with women in the Middle East. Working on global disease. Working on accountability in public schools. And advocating for a free marketplace and an economic environment in which businesses can innovate and create jobs.
If we [American nation] are only thinking about tomorrow or the next day and not thinking about 10 years from now, we're not going to control our own economic future, because China, Germany - they're making these [clean energy] investments. And I'm not going to cede those jobs of the future to those countries. I expect those new energy sources to be built right here in the United States.
Government does not create wealth. The major role for the government is to create an environment where people take risks to expand the job rate in the United States.
I have had the rich satisfaction of knowing and working with many openly gay and lesbian Americans, and I have come to realize that "gay" is an artificial category when it comes to measuring a man or woman's on-the-job performance or commitment to shared goals. It says little about the person. Our differences and prejudices pale next to our historic challenge.
We are part of the whole which we call the universe, but it is an optical delusion of our mind that we think we are separate. This separateness is like a prison for us. Our job is to widen the circle of our compassion so we feel connected with all people and situations.
I think raising wages, investing in infrastructure, making sure that people have access to good educations that equip them for the jobs of the future. Those are all agenda items that would help alleviate some of those economic pressures and dislocations that people are experiencing. The problem was I couldn't convince the Republican Congress to pass a lot of them.
Trying to stop suiciders -- which we're doing a pretty good job of on occasion -- is difficult to do. And what the Iraqis are going to have to eventually do is convince those who are conducting suiciders who are not inspired by Al Qaeda, for example, to realize there's a peaceful tomorrow.