If somebody was sending rockets into my house, where my two daughters sleep at night, I’m going to do everything in my power to stop that, and I would expect Israelis to do the same thing.

But having made my decision as Commander-in-Chief based on what I am convinced is our national security interests, I will seek authorization for the use of force from the American people's representatives in Congress.

Persevere. Nothing worthwhile is easy.

We lose ourselves when we compromise the very ideals that we fight to defend. And we honor those ideals by upholding them not when it's easy, but when it is hard.

As president, I decided that a strong, confident America could advance our national security by engaging directly with the Iranian government. We've seen the results.

I kept finding the same anguish, the same doubt; a self-contempt that neither irony nor intellect seemed able to deflect. Even DuBois’s learning and Baldwin’s love and Langston’s humor eventually succumbed to its corrosive force, each man finally forced to doubt art’s redemptive power, each man finally forced to withdraw, one to Africa, one to Europe, one deeper into the bowels of Harlem, but all of them in the same weary flight, all of them exhausted, bitter men, the devil at their heels.

...I believe deeply that we canot solve the challenges of your time unless we solve them together - unless we perfect our union by understanding that we may have differnt stories, but we hold common hopes; that we may not look the same and we may not have come from the same place, but we all want to move in the same direction - towards a better future for our children and our grandchildren. This belief comes from my unyielding faith in the decency and generosity of the American people.