We must act, knowing that our work will be imperfect.

They will tell you that the Americans who sleep in the streets and beg for food got there because they’re all lazy or weak of spirit. That the inner-city children who are trapped in dilapidated schools can’t learn and won’t learn and so we should just give up on them entirely. That the innocent people being slaughtered and expelled from their homes half a world away are somebody else’s problem to take care of.

For the young people here: practicality is a good thing. There are times where compromise is necessary. That's part of wisdom. But it's also important to hang on to what you believe.

American leadership is not simply a matter of going it alone and bearing all of the burden ourselves.

Politics in this country [USA] is always tough. It's always contentious, because this is a big country and a diverse country, and people have strong points of view, and we've got a great diversity of interests.

It's not enough to celebrate the ideals that we're built on, liberty and justice and equality for all. Those just can't be words on paper, the work of every generation is to make those words mean something, concrete in the lives of our children. And we won't get there as long as kids in Baltimore or Ferguson or New York or Appalachia or the Mississippi delta or the Pine Ridge reservation believe that their lives are somehow worthless.

Where the stakes are the highest, in the war on terror, we cannot possibly succeed without extraordinary international cooperation. Effective international police actions require the highest degree of intelligence sharing, planning and collaborative enforcement.