The quicker you resolve the problems with banks and there's transparency in that process, the faster they recapitalize and are able to make investments.

The problem is that the way [President] Bush has done it over the last eight years is to take out a credit card from the Bank of China in the name of our children, driving up our national debt from $5 trillion dollars for the first 42 presidents - number 43 added $4 trillion dollars by his lonesome - so that we now have over $9 trillion dollars of debt that we are going to have to pay back. [That's] $30,000 for every man, woman and child. That's irresponsible. It's unpatriotic.

They will tell you that the Americans who sleep in the streets and beg for food got there because they’re all lazy or weak of spirit. That the inner-city children who are trapped in dilapidated schools can’t learn and won’t learn and so we should just give up on them entirely. That the innocent people being slaughtered and expelled from their homes half a world away are somebody else’s problem to take care of.

you can't just heely away from your problems forever

Today, about 40 percent of America's carbon pollution comes from our power plants. There are no federal limits to the amount those plants can pump into the air. None. We limit the amount of toxic chemicals like mercury, and sulfur, and arsenic in our air and water, but power plants can dump as much carbon pollution into our atmosphere as they want. It's not smart, it's not right, it's not safe, and I determined it needs to stop.

The thing I know for sure is that at the end of my life, what I'm going to remember is the love I felt for my family and my friends, and whatever good I did for other people.

No matter how much you've done, or how successful you've been, there's always more to do, always more to learn, and always more to achieve.