I'm not somebody who is always comfortable with language that implies I've got a monopoly on the truth, or that my faith is automatically transferable to others.

I don't buy the hype when everybody is saying how wonderful things are and how great I am, and I don't get too down when people say, "This is a disaster and he's done for."

If you look at how I've tried to and how I'll continue to try to govern, I'm not driven by some ideological agenda. I'm a pretty practical guy and I just want to make sure that things work.

We can rattle our sabers all we want but, realistically, we don't have troops for an invasion [Iran] and surgical strikes aren't going to work.

I went through six years of battles on health care because I didn't have $100 million worth of advertising saying how it would never work.

I think that part of my optimism comes from the belief that we as a people could actually, regardless of all the disadvantage of the past, regardless of the fact that a lot of other folks got a head start in the race, if we were able to make the race fair right now.

That applies, by the way, even to some of the folks who are now [Donald] Trump supporters. They're responding to a fictional character named Barack Obama who they see on Fox News or who they hear about through Rush Limbaugh.