Ultimately, peace is just not about politics. It's about attitudes; about a sense of empathy; about breaking down the divisions that we create for ourselves in our own minds and our own hearts that don't exist in any objective reality, but that we carry with us generation after generation. And I know, because America, we, too, have had to work hard over the decades, slowly, gradually, sometimes painfully, in fits and starts, to keep perfecting our union.

One of the challenges of a democratic government is making sure that even in the midst of emergencies and passions, we make sure that rule of law and the basic precepts of justice and liberty prevail.

To try to blackmail a president into giving them some concessions on issues that have nothing to do with the budget.

I said this right after the election - we have to remind ourselves we're on the same team. Vladimir Putin's not on our team.

Now, I've lived long enough to know that race relations are better than they were 10 or 20 or 30 years ago no matter what some folks say. You can see it not just in statistics, you see it in the attitudes of young Americans across the political spectrum. But we're not where we need to be. And all of us have more work to do.

Internationally, I have obviously been deeply concerned about how we fight the terrorist threat.

I think the average American, if they go to the workplace, somebody's next to 'em, they're not poking around trying to figure out what their religious beliefs are.