A preemptive action today, however well-justified, may come back with unwelcome consequences in the future. And because... I've done this. I've ordered these kinds of actions - I don't care how precise your bombs and your weapons are, when you set them off, innocent people will die.

If you are focusing your anger at government, you are focusing your anger at all of us. Government is just a personification of this country.

There's nothing wrong with making mistakes. Just don't respond with encores.

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.

With almost no time to decide, they [your loved ones] gave the entire country an incalculable gift. They saved the capitol from attack. They saved God knows how many lives. They saved the terrorists from claiming the symbolic victory of smashing the center of American government. And they did it as citizens. They allowed us to survive as a country that could fight terror and still maintain liberty and still welcome people from all over the world from every religion and race and culture as long as they shared our values, because ­ordinary people given no time at all to decide did the right thing.

Each generation of Americans must define what it means to be an American.

And I have a plan to do even better, to end welfare as we know it