People can quarrel with whether we should have more troops in Afghanistan or internationalize Iraq or whatever, but it is incontestable that on the day I left office, there were unaccounted for stocks of biological and chemical weapons.

Our mission in this new century is clear. For good or ill, we live in an interdependent world. We can't escape each other. Therefore, we have to spend our lives building a global community of shared responsibilities, shared values, shared benefits.

There are always going to be people who want to be president, and some days I'd like to give it to them.

I have news for the forces of greed and the defenders of the status quo: your time has come - and gone. It's time for change in America.

President Obama has offered a plan with 4 trillion dollars in debt reduction over a decade, with two and a half dollars of spending reductions for every one dollar of revenue increases, and tight controls on future spending. It's the kind of balanced approach proposed by the bipartisan Simpson-Bowles commission.

I ask that all Americans demonstrate in their personal and public lives... the high ethical standards that are essential to good character and to the continued success of our Nation.

Government is not the problem, and government is not the solution. We - the American people - we are the solution.