When the economy is still struggling, putting people back to work, finding ways to spur economic activity, ultimately can help to reduce the structural deficits and debts that countries experience.

Climate change poses a direct threat to the infrastructure of America that we need to stay competitive in this 21st-century economy.

No other advanced nation endures this kind of violence. None. Here in America, the murder rate is three times what it is in other developed nations. The murder rate with guns is ten times what it is in other developed nations. And there's nothing inevitable about it. It comes about because of decisions we make or fail to make. And it falls upon us to make it different.

I am somebody who usually writes out the rough draft in longhand. Then I type it into the computer, and that is where I do my editing. I find that if I write it on the computer, I go too quick. So I like getting that first draft out and then typing it in; you are less self-conscious about it.

If some of these [Republican] folks were around when Columbus set sail, they must have been founding members of the 'flat earth society.' They would not believe that the world was round.

That's what the leadership was teaching me, day by day: that the self-interest I was supposed to be looking for extended well beyond the immediacy of issues, that beneath the small talk and sketchy biographies and received opinions, people carried with them some central explanation of themselves. Stories full of terror and wonder, studded with events that still haunted or inspired them. Sacred stories.

This comes from a group of people who`ve been wrong about every foreign policy issue over the last two decades. They supported Hillary Clinton`s war in Libya. They supported President [Barack] Obama`s bombing of Assad.