We not only brought peace to many countries and people around the world, but we never dropped a bomb, we never launched a missile, and we never fired a bullet while I was in office. Yet we protected the interests of the American people in a peaceful, but strong way.

We have a special relationship with Israel. It's absolutely crucial that no one in our country or around the world ever doubt that our number one committment in the Middle East is to protect the right of Israel to exist, to exist permanently, and to exist in peace. It's a special relationship.

The fact is that we would have had comprehensive health care now had it not been for Ted Kennedy's deliberately blocking the legislation that I proposed in 1978 or '79.

Because we are free, we can never be indifferent to the fate of freedom elsewhere.

The abuse of women and girls is the most pervasive and unaddressed human right violation on earth.

Nearly all inmates are drawn from the ranks of the powerless and the poor. A child of privilege frequently receives the benefit of the doubt; a child of poverty seldom does.

In the Great Depression in which I grew up and remember vividly, unemployment was over 25 percent, and over 35 percent where I lived. A grown man would work all day, 16 hours, for a dollar. I remember hundreds of people walking by, people who had come down from the North just to get warm. They would come to our house as beggars even though they might have a college education. People didn't have money. They bartered; they'd trade eggs or pigs. It was just completely different.