We need to spend a trillion dollars rebuilding our schools, our roads, our basic science and research here in the United States.

Ninety-eight percent of all American companies have fewer than 100 employees. Over half of all Americans work for a small business. Small businesses are the backbone of our nation’s economy and we must protect this great resource.....Helping American small business is part of our movement for change and the end of politics as usual.

I would say that I have been consistent in my broad view of how American power should be deployed, and the view that we underestimate our power when we restrict it to just our military power. We shortchange our influence and our ability to shape events when that's the only tool we think we have in the toolbox.

We had to get out of Chicago so quick. Election night happens, suddenly I'm talking to Ben Bernanke and Hank Paulson and trying to figure out whether the world's going to fly apart, and Michelle is trying to figure out where the girls are going to go to school. And we pack up and leave and basically our house in Chicago just became like a time capsule. My desk in my home office still had stacks of articles and bills and stuff from 2008.

As you get older, your mind gets a little more set. And it needs the poking and prodding and breaking through of stereotypes that I think young people provide.

I have to make the very best judgments I can make in terms of what's gonna keep the American people safe. And is what, what's gonna uphold our Constitution and our traditions of due process.

I think at times of significant stress people are going to be looking for something and they don't always know exactly what it is that they're looking for and they may opt for change even if they're not entirely confident what that change will bring.