I think when you spread the wealth around it's good for everybody.

Sticking your head in the sand might make you feel safer, but it’s not going to protect you from the coming storm.

We can't get to the $4 trillion in savings that we need by just cutting the 12 percent of the budget that pays for things like medical research and education funding and food inspectors and the weather service. And we can't just do it by making seniors pay more for Medicare.

I, more than anything, obviously the presidency is the people, and it's been interesting the emotions in the last few months. What you realize is that you may never have the team that is together in the same way, under the same pressures, and the attachments that you make to folks from your chief of staff down to.

I think that sometimes the Democrats have to run upstream or swim upstream because we've got the Republicans making it out as if we don't care about these things, and we should be able to engage and be willing to engage in the discussion about morality and values.

[When I ordered 30,000 more troops into Afghanistan] that was the first time in which I looked out at a crowd of West Point graduates and knew that some of those might not come back because of that decision.

Nothing is more powerful than the black church experience. A good choir and a good sermon in the black church, it's pretty hard not to be move and be transported.