For we, the people, understand that our country cannot succeed when a shrinking few do very well and a growing many barely make it.

I look at some of the kids that I interact with, and they were born with so many disadvantages. And you could start off in your first interaction with them saying, "Unless they get a lot of compensatory help, they're not going to be able to compete; they're just so far behind, and they're wounded and they're hurt."

[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.

The point I was making was not that Grandmother harbors any racial animosity. She doesn't. But she is a typical white person.

The fact that there is a robust debate in Congress is good. The fact that the debate sometimes seems unanchored to facts is not so good.

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'm going to insist on making sure that we've got decent funding, that we've got enough teachers, that we've got computers in the classroom, but unless you turn off the television set and get over a certain anti-intellectualism that I think pervades some low-income communities, our children are not going to achieve.