I may not have been the greatest president, but I've had the most fun eight years.

You need to know that a member of Congress who refuses to allow the minimum wage to come up for a vote made more money during last year's one-month government shutdown than a minimum wage worker makes in an entire year.

The arts have long been an integral and vibrant part of our nation's cultural heritage. In its many forms, art enables us to gain a deeper understanding of ourselves and of our society. Providing us with a unique way to learn about people of other cultures, it allows us to discover all that we have in common. At its best, art can beautify our cities, encourage economic development and social change, and profoundly affect the ways we live our lives.

When we got organized as a country, [and] wrote a fairly radical Constitution, with a radical Bill of Rights, giving radical amounts of freedom to Americans, it was assumed that Americans who had that freedom would use it responsibly...When personal freedom is being abused, you have to move to limit it.

No one who has lived through the second half of the 20th century could possibly be blind to the enormous impact of exchange programs on the future of countries.

I have never believed we had to choose between either a clean and safe environment or a growing economy. Protecting the health and safety of all Americans doesn't have to come at the expense of our economy's bottom line. And creating thriving companies and new jobs doesn't have to come at the expense of the air we breathe, the water we drink, the food we eat, or the natural landscape in which we live. We can, and indeed must, have both.

Climate change is more remote than terror but a more profound threat to the future of the children and the grandchildren and the great-grandchildren I hope all of you have.