If you want to be forgiven, you have to extend forgiveness, even to people who aren't smart enough to ask for it.

Let's adopt some short-term strategies to get growth going and then let's have a long-term debt reduction package. That's what I think we should do and I think it will work.

When we make college more affordable, we make the American dream more achievable.

In today's knowledge-based economy, what you earn depends on what you learn. Jobs in the information technology sector, for example, pay 85 percent more than the private sector average.

It turns out that advancing equal opportunity and economic empowerment is both morally right and good economics. Why? Because discrimination, poverty and ignorance restrict growth. We know that investments in education, infrastructure and scientific and technological research increase growth. They increase good jobs, and they create new wealth for all of us.

North Koreans are irrational to some extent, but I don't think they're totally irrational. I think they watch American cable channels. I think they watch the European cable channels. I think they, their decision makers keep up more than we know. And I think they want us to think they're a little crazy.

The ideals that bind us together are as old as our nation, but so are the forces that pull us apart.