The United States has to go through structural reforms in terms of improving our education system or revamping our infrastructure or, you know, looking at some regulations that weren't properly controlling excesses on Wall Street.

That's why I stand here tonight. Because for two hundred and thirty two years, at each moment when that promise was in jeopardy, ordinary men and women - students and soldiers, farmers and teachers, nurses and janitors - found the courage to keep it alive.

In Missouri, it's a 50/50 state, so I'm kind of used to half the state being mad at me.

We remain the most prosperous, powerful nation on Earth. Our workers are no less productive than when this crisis began. Our minds are no less inventive, our goods and services no less needed than they were last week or last month or last year

When your team loses, everybody gets deflated. And it's hard, and it's challenging.

The more freely information flows, the stronger the society becomes, because then citizens of countries around the world can hold their own governments accountable. They can begin to think for themselves.

And lest we get on our high horse and think this is unique to some other place, remember that during the Crusades and the Inquisition, people committed terrible deeds in the name of Christ. In our home country, slavery and Jim Crow all too often was justified in the name of Christ.