There's a ton of academic literature that shows people are much more critical of female leaders than they are of male leaders. They're much less tolerant of female ambition, much more threatened by female power.

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.

Fears don't exist in isolation. They tend to rise and fall depending on what people think they can do about them.

There are real threats but there's a difference between recognizing real threats and an irrational kind of apocalyptic threat.

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.

I hope Barack Obama puts another woman on the Supreme Court. And this time, I hope it's a woman with kids.

Our sense of optimism, our can-do spirit, that's a source of great strength in America. But when there are no limits at all and we've gone through whole periods where we think everything has gone right, that's when disaster tends to strike.