Who you are, what you are, does not change after you occupy the oval office. All it does is magnify who you are. All it does is shine a spotlight on who you are.
If somebody was sending rockets into my house, where my two daughters sleep at night, I’m going to do everything in my power to stop that, and I would expect Israelis to do the same thing.
What I'm thinking about are the millions of people, many of whom write me very personal letters :"Dear Mr. President: I did not vote for you. I was against Obamacare. And then my son who didn't have health insurance signed up and we just found out that he had an illness. And thankfully he's now covered, otherwise he might not have gotten treatment and I might have lost my house."
To those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent, know that you are on the wrong side of history; but that we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist.
Nothing will deter us from building the future we want for our children. What greater rejection of those who would tear down our world than marshaling our best efforts to save it.
If we are enforcing what should be the rules around Medicare and making sure the people are getting the bang for the buck, it's not going to be possible for insurance companies to simply pass on those costs to Medicare recipients, because ultimately it's Uncle Sam that's paying for those services anyway.
Having a tax code that rewards companies that are shipping jobs overseas instead of companies that are investing here in the United States, that will not make us more competitive.
I think that at a certain stage those early ambitions burn away, partly because you achieve something, you get something done, you get some notoriety. And then the particularities of who you are and what your deepest commitments are begin expressing themselves. You're not just chasing the idea of "me" being important, but you, rather, are chasing a particular passion.
I am encouraged by the president-elect's [Donald Trump] insistence that NATO is a commitment that does not change. And his full commitment to NATO as the foundation for our international security I think is very important.
The truth is, some of these comments, when you actually ask 'well, this is based on what? This notion that Obama's a socialist, for example?' Nobody can really give you a good answer.
I was pretty realistic to people about what we could get done, and the situation we were in, and trying to tamp down expectations. If you listen to my stump speeches, if you listen to what I said at Grant Park, I kept on saying, "Look, this is not just about me, this is not going to happen in one year, or one term, or even one presidency." And we tried to layer into everything we were saying a sense of hope, but also realism.
It's my job as President and Congress’s job to maker sure that there’s some rules of the road that people are going to abide by and that we’ve got transparency and accountability that this stuff is being posted and one of the things that we are going to do is put together an independent board on the recovery package…
Yes, this is hard. But there should be no question that the United States of America is stepping up to the plate. We recognize our role in creating this problem; we embrace our responsibility to combat it. We will do our part, and we will help developing nations do theirs. But we can only succeed in combating climate change if we are joined in this effort by every nation - developed and developing alike. Nobody gets a pass.
A lot of countries have advanced capabilities. And given the vulnerabilities of our infrastructure and our economies to digital platforms, we have to be careful in making sure that this doesn't become a lawless, low-level battlefield.