This kind of gaping inequality gives lie to the promise that’s at the very heart of America: that this is a place where you can make it if you try. We tell people - we tell our kids - that in this country, even if you’re born with nothing, work hard and you can get into the middle class. We tell them that your children will have a chance to do even better than you do. That’s why immigrants from around the world historically have flocked to our shores.

Chancellor [Angela] Merkel is perhaps the only leader left among our closest allies that was there when I arrived. So in some ways we are now the veterans of many challenges over the last eight years.

If you're looking for the safe choice, you shouldn't be supporting a black guy named Barack Obama to be the next leader of the free world.

One voice can change a room, and if one voice can change a room, then it can change a city, and if it can change a city, it can change a state, and if it change a state, it can change a nation, and if it can change a nation, it can change the world. Your voice can change the world.

No one is exempt from the call to find common ground.

My identity might begin with the fact of my race, but it didn't, couldn't end there. At least that's what I would choose to believe.

I reiterated our hope that negotiations over the United Kingdom's exit from the E.U. will be conducted in a smooth and orderly and transparent fashion and preserve as closely as possible the economic and political and security relationships between the U.K. and E.U.