It still puts burden on some troops of ours who are there [in Afghanistan and Iraq] as advisors and facilitators.

As you might imagine, if you're a teenager having a couple of people with microphones and guns always following you around, that could grate on them. But you know, they've handled it with grace and I give Michelle [Obama] most of the credit for how well they've done, but I also just think they are graceful, good young, young women.

I reserve the right, as president of the United States to meet with anybody at a time and place of my choosing if I think it's going to keep America safe.

I will never turn Medicare into a voucher. No American should ever have to spend their golden years at the mercy of insurance companies. They should retire with the care and dignity they have earned.

The greatest threat to U.S. and global security is no longer a nuclear exchange between nations, but nuclear terrorism by violent extremists and nuclear proliferation to an increasing number of states.

Everything we've done has been designed to make sure that we address that number one priority. That's what the sanctions regime was all about. That's how we were able to mobilize the international community, including some folks that we are not particularly close to, to abide by these sanctions. That's how these crippling sanctions came about, was because we [USA] were able to gain global consensus that Iran having a nuclear weapon would be a problem for everybody.

My powers of empathy, my ability to reach into another's heart, cannot penetrate the blank stares of those who would murder innocents with abstract, serene satisfaction.