Look at Chancellor [Angela] Merkel, her personal story helps to tell a story of incredible achievement that the German people have embarked on and I think is something that you should be very proud of.
To all those watching tonight from beyond our shores, from parliaments and palaces, to those who are huddled around radios in the forgotten corners of the world, our stories are singular, but our destiny is shared, and a new dawn of American leadership is at hand.
I think that we are in a position to continue to make progress, but it's gonna require us to both recognize what the problems are, also recognize the progress we've made. Last point I'd make on this, since we're on criminal justice: During the course of my presidency crime has been the lowest it's been probably since the '60s.
Health care has become a proxy for a broader set of issues about how much government should be involved in our economy, particularly coming off a huge economic crisis.
We the people declare today that the most evident of truth that all of us are created equal ... that our individual freedom is inextricably bound to the freedom of every soul on Earth.
I think the big challenge that we've got on education is making sure that from kindergarten or prekindergarten through your 14th or 15th year of school, or 16th year of school, or 20th year of school, that you are actually learning the kinds of skills that make you competitive and productive in a modern, technological economy.
We won't apologise for our way of life, nor will we weaver in its defence, and for those who seek to advance their aims by inducing terror and slaughtering innocents, we say to you now that our spirit is stronger and cannot be broken, you cannot outlast us, and we will defeat you.
I was pretty realistic to people about what we could get done, and the situation we were in, and trying to tamp down expectations. If you listen to my stump speeches, if you listen to what I said at Grant Park, I kept on saying, "Look, this is not just about me, this is not going to happen in one year, or one term, or even one presidency." And we tried to layer into everything we were saying a sense of hope, but also realism.