Climate change is one of the issues I worry most about because its impacts are enormous. But they're gradual, they're not immediate.

[When I ordered 30,000 more troops into Afghanistan] that was the first time in which I looked out at a crowd of West Point graduates and knew that some of those might not come back because of that decision.

I believe that the free enterprise system is the greatest engine of prosperity the world's ever known.

You not only do you appreciate the sacrifices people have made and the hours they've kept and the soccer games they missed and the birthday parties, but I also had a lot of young people who came in here [to White House], and this probably, you know, echoes with you, in your own experience, you were young when you got here.

One of the things that I am concerned about is the degree to which we've seen a lot of commentary lately where there were, there are Republicans or pundits or cable commentators who seemed to have more confidence in Vladimir Putin than fellow Americans because those fellow Americans were Democrats. That cannot be.

When we were working on immigration reform and there was a young Latino man, young immigration activist here who, in the Roosevelt Room, refused to shake my hand.He made a point of saying, "I can't shake your hand; you're deporting too many people." And I just said to him, "Young man, I'm glad that you feel so passionately about this issue, but you're with the president right now in the White House. You've got to think about what's going to be most effective in getting what you need, what you're trying to accomplish. Because this may not be your best strategy."

We don't make determinations about who we love. And that's why I think that discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation is wrong.