Sometimes they're nothing, sometimes they're something, sometimes there's a connection that years later may show up. All of this information is useful.

I'm not going to Wall Street [after the presidency]. The amount of time that I'll be investing in issues is going to be high. But it'll be necessarily in a different capacity.

I think I'm able to reach a lot of folks, despite the fact that the conventional news media sometimes says, "You know, this speech is too long," or "It's too complicated," or "He needs to have better sound bites," or what have you.

One of the great things about the United States is that when it comes to world affairs, the president obviously is the leader of the Executive Branch, the Commander-in-Chief, the spokesperson for the nation, but the influence and the work that we have is the result not just of the president, it is the result of countless interactions and arrangements and relationships between our military and other militaries, and our diplomats and other diplomats, the intelligence officers and development workers.

I will not stand by while the special interests use the same old tactics to keep things exactly the way they are ... Not this time. Not now.

Whether our forebears were strangers who crossed the Atlantic or the Pacific or the Rio Grande, we are here only because this country welcomed them in and taught them that to be an American is about something more than what we look like, or what our last names are, or how we worship.

Every four minutes, another American home or business goes solar.