There is a little bit of that schoolyard attitude of, it's one thing for a guy your own size to mouth off to you, but if there's a little guy, you should just smack him around. And it's probably bad advice in the schoolyard. It's certainly not a good way to run a foreign policy because even when you are dealing with a non-peer, militarily, war is complicated.
Barack ObamaThe campaign was a more significant training ground than I think people give it credit for. By the time I got here, I think I had a pretty good sense of what was required. But the circumstances in which I came in were different than most executives, right? The enterprise was in the midst of a major crisis.
Barack ObamaI think that when it comes to issues of trade, I think it is important for us to be in favor of trade, but I also think it is important to make sure that we are putting in place the labor standards, the environmental standards, that are going to provide some of a fighting chance for American workers.
Barack ObamaThere's something about these steps [in Oval Office] and thinking about everybody who's walked here and all the business that's been done here.
Barack ObamaWhat we want is for people to know that you can get affordable health care and most young Americans, they're not covered and the truth is they can get coverage all for what it costs to pay your cell phone bill.
Barack ObamaI could say, as a member of Congress, we usually get an alert if something is going to happen at the Capitol.
Barack ObamaEverything 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.
Barack Obama