Volunteering is an act of heroism on a grand scale. And it matters profoundly. It does more than help people beat the odds; it changes the odds.

It is a commonplace of American life that immigrants have made our country great and continue to make a very important contribution to the fabric of American life. But...under the pressures we face today, we can't afford to lose control of our borders, or to take on new financial burdens, at a time when we are not adequately providing for the jobs, the health care, and the education of our own people. Therefore, immigration must be a priority for this administration.

To build a twenty-first-century economy, America must revive a nineteenth-century habit--investing in the common, national economic resources that enable every person and every firm to create wealth and value.

Some day we hope to liberate every man on earth from the tendency as old as human history to identify our strength and manhood with the ability to control the lives, limit the chances, and doom the dreams of women and girls.

The risk is that as we come out of this recession, we'll have so much debt to finance, we'll either have to have inflation or very high interest rates to continue to borrow the money, or both. That's a risk.

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

I think it's very important, and I think that what young people will learn from my experience is that even presidents have to do that and there are consequences when you don't. But I also think that there will be a box score, and there will be that one negative, and then there will be the hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of times when the record will show that I did not abuse my authority as president, that I was truthful with the American people.