A child's course in life should be determined not by the zip code she's born in, but by the strength of her work ethic and the scope of her dreams.

I've consistently said, we need to support charter schools. I think it is important to experiment, by looking at how we can reward excellence in the classroom.

There's no one who I believe has ever captured the soul of America more profoundly than Abraham Lincoln has.

Too often, we have failed to enforce international norms when it's inconvenient to do so.

The fact that we are here today to debate raising America's debt limit is a sign of leadership failure... It is a sign that we now depend on ongoing financial assistance from foreign countries to finance our Government's reckless fiscal policies.

I have been in Washington for a while now, and most things don't surprise me. The fact that twenty 6-year-olds were gunned down in the most violent fashion possible and this town couldn't do anything about it was stunning to me.

As long as I'm president of the United States Iran will not get a nuclear weapon. I made that clear when I came into office.