When any kind of military action is popular it's because either there's been a very clear, direct threat to us - 9/11 - or an administration uses various hooks to suggest that American interests were directly threatened - like in Panama or Grenada. And sometimes, those hooks are more persuasive than others, but typically, they're not put before Congress.

There's a whole generation coming up behind us that was engaged, inspired, worked for change during the course of my presidency, saw what was possible.

I believe in evolution, scientific inquiry, and global warming; I believe in free speech, whether politically correct or politically incorrect, and I am suspicious of using government to impose anybody's religious beliefs -including my own- on nonbelievers.

We as a country have to do some soul-searching.

In many ways [those middle-aged black ladies] my touchstone, because they are what I meant when I talked about the audacity of hope.

We [USA] don't have diplomatic leverage to eliminate every vestige of a peaceful nuclear program in Iran. What we do have the leverage to do is to make sure that they don't have a weapon.

What is required of us now is a new era of responsibility - a recognition, on the part of every American, that we have duties to ourselves, our nation, and the world, duties that we do not grudgingly accept but rather seize gladly, firm in the knowledge that there is nothing so satisfying to the spirit, so defining of our character, than giving our all to a difficult task. This is the price and the promise of citizenship.