So while I will never minimize the costs involved in military action, I am convinced that a failure to act in Libya would have carried a far greater price for America.
All I care about is making sure that I leave behind an America that is stronger, more prosperous, more stable, more secure than it was when I came into office and that's going to continue to drive me.
I've got a job to do, and I'm going to be judged upon whether or not the world is more peaceful and whether or not America is more prosperous and more compassionate.
Now, as the world's largest economy and as the world's second largest emitter, America bears our responsibility to address climate change, and we intend to meet that responsibility.
I have said repeatedly that America doesn't torture and I'm going to make sure that we don't torture. Those are part and parcel an effort to regain America's moral stature in the world.
We are committed to a world in which we keep America safe, but we recognize that our power doesn't just flow from our extraordinary military but also flows from the strength in our ideals and our principles and our values.
In known history, nobody has had such capacity for altering the universe than the people of the United States of America. And nobody has gone about it in such an aggressive way.
That's what I think is important to remember now and when you hear that slogan, "Make America great again." I think it's important that we remind everybody that America was never great in itself. It's been great in its aspirations.
Walt Whitman and Emerson are the poets who have given the world more than anyone else. Perhaps Whitman is not so widely read in England, but England never appreciates a poet until he is dead.
We've got a cultural issue in America. We've got to change the whole way the issue is looked at. That's the mission. Some in the political process don't have enough patience for that, and I probably don't either.
America’s possibilities are limitless, for we possess all the qualities that this world without boundaries demands: youth and drive; diversity and openness; an endless capacity for risk and a gift for reinvention. My fellow Americans, we are made for this moment, and we will seize it - so long as we seize it together.
The American people have got a touchstone: Which party voted for the tools necessary to protect America and which party didn't? And that's what I'm trying to get people to focus on.