The American spirit wears no political label. In service to others and yes, in sacrifice for our country, there are no Republicans; there are no Democrats; there are only Americans.

The Russians need to understand that you cannot have peace [in Syria] unless you resolve the question of Sunni buy-in.

We need a leader who has a sense of balance, an understanding of the ebb and flow of history and a sense of our country's unique place in it. This is a foreign policy debate, and you cannot conduct foreign policy without a sense of what we are fighting for. And any President who can reduce the conduct of this country's affairs to a morning's attack by a bunch of demented fascists does not, in my view, understand what this great nation is all about.

And if [Vladimir Putin] does fight ISIL alone, how does it work out for Russia to have sided with Assad, sided with Iran, sided with Hizballah, when they're trying to reach out to the rest of the Sunni world in the region? That's not a good equation for Russia.

I don't want to claim that God is on our side. As Abraham Lincoln told us, I want to pray humbly that we are on God's side.

It's the [George Bush] president's fiscal policies that have driven up the biggest deficits in American history. He's added more debt to the debt of the United States in four years than all the way from George Washington to Ronald Reagan put together.

I think that too far, too much, to a greater degree than is anywhere near appropriate, America and our politics are being governed by more and more powerful interests, by fewer and fewer people in the sense of the amount of money that has controlled access and other kinds of things.