Foreign policy is a little bit like a guy who goes to Las Vegas. If you win too much, then you eventually bet the mortgage. You start to think you are infallible.

I've heard people in the Middle East tell me that the most inspiring thing for them as people struggling against dictatorship in the Middle East is the memory of the civil rights movement.

The top line is that hubris is a disease that comes from success.

I think the most inspiring thing that Americans can do for the rest of the world is struggle against the evils in our own society.

On domestic policy, one of the major stories in American politics has been the growing ideological and political self-confidence of the Democratic Party, and the growing ideological and political pessimism of the Republican Party.

There's nothing wrong with being proud of America, believing that America can do great things. America can do great things, it has done great things. I think we have to have the self-awareness to recognize that the world is a very, very big place, that we could be a force for good things in the world, but we have to have the humility to recognize that sometimes even when we think we're acting from the best of motives our own idealism can be infected by self-interest. Other people in other countries can see it sometimes better than we can.

It's easy to see why conservatives would be salivating at the thought of a Hillary primary challenge. Presidents who face serious primary challenges—Ford, Carter, Bush I—almost always lose. The last president who lost reelection without a serious primary challenge, by contrast, was Herbert Hoover. But in truth, the chances that Obama will face a primary challenge are vanishingly slim, and the chances that he will lose reelection only slightly higher. No wonder conservatives are fantasizing about Hillary Clinton taking down Barack Obama. If she doesn't, it's unlikely they will.