I have become a symbol of the possibility of America returning to our best traditions.

That's the true genius of America: that America can change. Our union can be perfected. What we've already achieved gives us hope for what we can and must achieve tomorrow.

Making your mark on the world is hard. If it were easy, everybody would do it. But it's not. It takes patience, it takes commitment, and it comes with plenty of failure along the way. The real test is not whether you avoid this failure, because you won't. it's whether you let it harden or shame you into inaction, or whether you learn from it; whether you choose to persevere.

My abiding faith in the American people is undiminished. That's still what drives me every single day.

I'm never surprised by controversies that are whipped up in Washington.

I have complete confidence in the American people and our legal traditions and the prosecutors, the tough prosecutors from New York who specialize in terrorism.

We don't have time for a meeting of the Flat Earth Society.