This is one way that wealthy Americans could really contribute. They could put hundreds of millions of dollars into the infrastructure bank, be a good investment for them, for their children, for their grandchildren, and they would directly contribute to revitalizing a big sector of middle-class wages in America and making our country more productive, so that we could create more opportunity. But I think that we could get a lot of grassroots support from, like, local chambers of commerce and other things if they understood exactly how this infrastructure bank would work.

When I first came to Washington in the 1960s, even at the height of the Vietnam War, until the end there in '68 there was a certain climate of cooperation. And then in the late sixties and in through the seventies, politics began getting more mean. And then from the eighties on it seemed to be institutionalized, this personal attack business. And I just hate it.

I am trying to be honest with you and it hurts me. Now.

We've had periods of meanness in American politics. Actually, the dawn of partisan division in America was basically in George Washington's second term, when it was obvious that he would be the first and only consensus president.

When I leave the office on January 20th, I will leave even more idealistic than I was the day I took the oath of office.

Part of our essential humanity is paying respect to what God gave us and what will be here a long time after we're gone.

Great rewards will come to those who can live together, learn together, work together, forge new ties that bind together.