This is our first task-caring for our children. It's our first job. If we don't get that right, we don't get anything right. That's how, as a society, we will be judged.

This is a time of great change in the world but America's always been a pillar of strength and a beacon of hope to peoples around the globe and that's what it must continue to be.

The United States will do what we must to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.

For decades, our differences with Iran meant that our governments almost never spoke to each other. Ultimately, that did not advance America's interests.

For half of the world's population, roughly three billion people around the world living on less than two dollars a day, an election is at best a means, not an end; a starting point, not deliverance. These people are looking less for an "electocracy" than for the basic elements that for most of us define a decent life--food, shelter, electricity, basic health care, education for their children, and the ability to make their way through life without having to endure corruption, violence, or arbitrary power.

You not only do you appreciate the sacrifices people have made and the hours they've kept and the soccer games they missed and the birthday parties, but I also had a lot of young people who came in here [to White House], and this probably, you know, echoes with you, in your own experience, you were young when you got here.

Sometimes it may seem as if progress is stalled but what history of post-war Germany shows is that strength and determination and focus and adherence to the values that we care about will result in a better future for our children and our grandchildren.