People will vote for someone who [they perceive] is strong and wrong before they will vote for someone who appears weak but is right.

President Obama's approach embodies the values, the ideas and the direction America has to take to build the 21st-century version of the American Dream: a nation of shared opportunities, shared responsibilities, shared prosperity, a shared sense of community.

Today, many companies are reporting that their number one constraint on growth is the inability to hire workers with the necessary skills.

I ask you to join in a re-United States. We need to empower our people so they can take more responsibility for their own lives in a world that is ever smaller, where everyone counts.... We need a new spirit of community, a sense that we are all in this together, or the American Dream will continue to wither. Our destiny is bound up with the destiny of every other American.

The future belongs to those who are creative collaborators

Only the police should have handguns.

Our land of new promise will be a nation that meets its obligations, a nation that balances its budget, but never loses the balance of its values.