There’s no doubt that there’s some folks who just really dislike me because they don’t like the idea of a black President.

My job to the Muslim world is to communicate that the Americans are not your enemy. We sometimes make mistakes. We have not been perfect.

If you're reading something from a Nobel Prize-winning physicist next to some guy in his underwear writing in his basement, or his mom's basement, on text, it looks like it's equally plausible.

We reward people a lot for being rich, for being famous, for being cute, for being thin... one of the values I think we need to instill in our country, in our children, is a sense of 'usefulness', in other words, are we useful, are we making other peoples' lives a little bit better?

I have always had extraordinarily good relations with very conservative colleagues. And that's not because I agree with any of them or fudge on my positions, but people feel I listen to them and give them the benefit of the doubt. I assume the best of people. And that, I think, is an attitude that is maybe rare in politics.

Better may not be as good as the best, but better is surprisingly hard to obtain. And better is actually harder than worse.

We have a stake in one another...what binds us together is greater than what drives us apart.