Our job as Americans is to restore that basic bargain that says, if you work hard, if you're willing to meet your responsibilities, you can get ahead. You can get ahead. Doesn't matter what you look like, doesn't matter where you come from. Our middle class, when it's growing, when it's thriving, when there are ladders of opportunity for people to do a little bit better each year and then make sure that their kids are doing even better than them, that's the American dream. That's what we got to fight for. That has to be the north star that guides everything we do.

we will encourage more Americans to study in Muslim communities

I don't want to make decisions about what I'm eating or wearing. Because I have too many other decisions to make.

America and Islam are not exclusive and need not be in competition. Instead, they overlap, and share common principles of justice and progress, tolerance and the dignity of all human beings.

Nations are more successful when their women are successful.

I am a firm believer that you don't do anything significant by yourself. Again, maybe there are exceptions. There's the Picasso or the Mozart.

I believe in evolution, scientific inquiry, and global warming; I believe in free speech, whether politically correct or politically incorrect, and I am suspicious of using government to impose anybody's religious beliefs -including my own- on nonbelievers.