No party has a monopoly on wisdom. No democracy works without compromise. But when Governor Romney and his allies in Congress tell us we can somehow lower our deficit by spending trillions more on new tax breaks for the wealthy - well, you do the math. I refuse to go along with that. And as long as I'm President, I never will.

I cannot swallow whole the view of Lincoln as the Great Emancipator.

We should foster a culture in which people's private religious beliefs, including atheists and agnostics, are respected. And that's the kind of culture that I think allows all of us, then, to believe what we want. That's freedom of conscience. That's what our Constitution guarantees.

California is our biggest economy. California is our biggest agricultural producer. So what happens here matters to every working American.

We are an American family and we rise and fall together as one nation.

Democracy is hard work.

Everybody acknowledges that the current path we're on is unsustainable, not just for the people who don't have health insurance but for those who do.