There is no shame in confusion or fear. "There was only shame in the silence fear had produced. . . . It was the silence that betrayed us."

We need to spend a trillion dollars rebuilding our schools, our roads, our basic science and research here in the United States.

By 2016, the people who had looked to [Barack] Obama for change were looking somewhere else.

I am asking my Attorney General to create a special unit of federal prosecutors and leading state attorneys general to expand our investigations into the abusive lending and packaging of risky mortgages that led to the housing crisis. This new unit will hold accountable those who broke the law, speed assistance to homeowners, and help turn the page on an era of recklessness that hurt so many Americans.

We've persevered because of a belief we share with the Iraqi people - a belief that out of the ashes of war, a new beginning could be born in this cradle of civilization. Through this remarkable chapter in the history of the United States and Iraq, we have met our responsibility. Now, it's time to turn the page.

[ William Ayers] is an example of what I'm talking about. This is a guy who lives in my neighborhood, who's a professor of English in Chicago who I know and who I have not received some official endorsement from. He's not somebody who I exchange ideas from on a regular basis.

I remember having meetings with Republican senators who initially had been trying to engage [Obamacare] but saw that the politics of 'no' were growing inside the Republican Party.