I firmly believe you never should spend your time being the former anything.

American national security and American economic interests, of course - every president, every secretary of state - that is the primary goal. As you are in this job and in the work, you begin to see, though, that in the long run, both American economic interests and American national security are better served when there are other decent countries in the world who are both your allies and even when your adversaries are acting more decently.

For 60 years, my country, the United States, pursued stability at the expense of democracy in this region, here in the Middle East, and we achieved neither.

After all, when the world looks to America, they look to us because we are the most successful political and economic experiment in human history.

It is a dangerous thing to ask why someone else has been given more. It is humbling - and indeed healthy - to ask why you have been given so much.

The U.S. has since the end of World War II had an answer - we stand for free peoples and free markets, we are willing to support and defend them - we will sustain a balance of power that favors freedom.

We've organized human potential and have been better at using human potential better than any country on the face of the Earth. That's because we've recognized that our national creed, our national identity, is that it doesn't matter where you're from, it matters where you're going. You can come from hard circumstances and do great things. We've got to make that true for a whole variety of people who no longer feel that.