Quotes from Barack Obama

This is American leadership at its best: We stand with people who fight for their own freedom, and we rally other nations on behalf of our common security and common humanity.

Look, Americans will go for leadership that makes sense. Our job, you know, as public officials, is not to put our finger in the air. Our job is to listen, and then lead.

Leadership isn't just legislation, that it's a matter of persuading people and giving them confidence, and bringing them together and setting a tone.

I would meet directly with the leadership in Iran.

Sanctions alone could not stop Iran's nuclear program. But they did help bring Iran to the negotiating table.

I think that leadership more than anything is about setting a course and describing a vision for people.

The problem is that, over time, big pieces of business that have to get done without leadership from Washington, don't get done.

Reading makes all other learning possible. We have to get books into our children's hands early and often.

America is a nation of immigrants. And so the question is, how do we make legal immigration faster, less bureaucratic, cut the red tape?

The thing I know for sure is that at the end of my life, what I'm going to remember is the love I felt for my family and my friends, and whatever good I did for other people.

My task over the last two years hasn't just been to stop the bleeding. My task has also been to try to figure out how do we address some of the structural problems in the economy that have prevented more Googles from being created.

If we choose to keep those tax breaks for millionaires and billionaires, if we choose to keep a tax break for corporate jet owners, if we choose to keep tax breaks for oil and gas companies that are making hundreds of billions of dollars, then that means we've got to cut some kids off from getting a college scholarship.

Building new roads and bridges creates jobs. Growing our exports creates jobs. Reforming our outdated tax system and our broken immigration system creates jobs.

I want to reform the tax code so that it's simple, fair, and asks the wealthiest households to pay higher taxes on incomes over $250,000 - the same rate we had when Bill Clinton was president; the same rate we had when our economy created nearly 23 million new jobs, the biggest surplus in history, and a lot of millionaires to boot.

Congress should fund research on the effects that violent video games have on young minds... We don't benefit from ignorance. We don't benefit from not knowing the science.

Many of our ideas of democracy, so much of our literature and philosophy and science can be traced back to roots right here in Athens.

We should never forget that God granted us the power to reason so that we would do His work here on Earth - so that we would use science to cure disease, and heal the sick, and save lives.

To restore America's competitiveness, we must recruit a new generation of science and technology leaders by investing in diversity.

Ensuring that the US continues to lead the world in science and technology will be a central priority for my administration.

Some may still deny the overwhelming judgment of science.

Few challenges facing America and the world are more urgent than combating climate change. The science is beyond dispute and the facts are clear.

We will restore science to its rightful place and wield technology's wonders to raise health care's quality and lower its cost.

We the people declare today that the most evident of truth that all of us are created equal ... that our individual freedom is inextricably bound to the freedom of every soul on Earth.

If we aren't willing to pay a price for our values, then we should ask ourselves whether we truly believe in them at all.