We've got some fundamental choices to make about the kind of country we want to be. Will we accept an economy where only a few of us do spectacularly well, or are we going to build an economy where everyone who works hard has a chance to get ahead?

I don't think that hedge funds are bad per se. I think they're just one more financial tool. And in that sense, they're useful.

If you ask the average person they'd tell ya, "Naw, it's much more dangerous," despite the fact that violent crime has dropped precipitously.

It is possible for leaders or regimes to be cruel, bigoted, twisted in their world views and still make rational calculations with respect to their limits and their self-preservation.

I would say this, I'll go back to those black ladies I was talking about who love them some Barack and love Michelle even more - and by the way, they are not middle-aged anymore, because I'm now middle-aged. So they're a little bit older. As fervent as they were, as excited and happy as they were when I was elected, they had to go to work the next morning. They still had trouble paying those bills. They might have still had a son who was in trouble with the law or couldn't get a job because of a felony record. They didn't stop being grounded.

Let it be said to our children's children that when we were tested we refused to let this journey end, that we didn't turn our back nor did we falter; and with eyes fixed on the horizon and God's grace upon us, we carried forth that great gift of freedom and delivered it safely to future generations.

I went through six years of battles on health care because I didn't have $100 million worth of advertising saying how it would never work.