The reason I take pride for that is one of the things you worry about when you're in the bubble, and there's all this pomp and circumstance and hail to the chief is, do you lose touch with what you thought was important and what brought you here? And I'm proud that I don't think I have lost touch.

If you're one of the more than 250 million Americans who already have health insurance, you will keep your health insurance. This law will only make it more secure and more affordable.

I insist on the dignity and God- given potential and work of every child, regardless of race or gender or sexual orientation or what zip code they were born in.

I think that to the extent that we focus on problems where we can build a moral and a political consensus, then I think that we move the country forward and when we are divided and our politics is focused on dividing, then I think we're less successful, not just from the perspective of the Democratic Party or the Republican Party but from the perspective of the nation as a whole.

We lose ourselves when we compromise the very ideals that we fight to defend. And we honor those ideals by upholding them not when it's easy, but when it is hard.

Any time bombs are used to target civilians it is an act of terror.

By the way, you know, Mitt Romney and McCain, I don't agree with them, but they would have been okay. I could have been satisfied with them.