One thing you learn in this job [being US President] is that even if something's not your fault, you're still responsible. And that's how it should be.

We don't turn back. We leave no one behind. We pull each other up. We draw strength from our victories, and we learn from our mistakes, but we keep our eyes fixed on that distant horizon, but we keep our eyes fixed on that distant horizon, knowing that Providence is with us, and that we are surely blessed to be citizens of the greatest nation on Earth.

I believe in returning the nation's wealth to its rightful owners.

The Cold War has been over for a long time. I'm not interested in having battles that, frankly, started before I was born.

Sustaining the energy and focus involved in doing a good job I think starts to gets tougher the longer you do it.

For we have always understood that when times change, so must we, that fidelity to our founding principles requires new responses to new challenges, that preserving our individual freedoms ultimately requires collective action.

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.