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"I have always had extraordinarily good relations with very conservative colleagues. And that's not because I agree with any of them or fudge on my positions, but people feel I listen to them and give them the benefit of the doubt. I assume the best of people. And that, I think, is an attitude that is maybe rare in politics."
"I believe that the free enterprise system is the greatest engine of prosperity the world's ever known."
"We have to enforce the laws we've already got, make sure that we're keeping guns out of the hands of criminals, those who are mentally ill. I also share your belief that weapons that were designed for soldiers in war theaters don't belong on our streets. And so what I'm trying to do is to get a broader conversation about how do we reduce the violence generally."
"American values and legal traditions do not permit the indefinite detention of people beyond our borders."
"The president of the United States is supposed to lead the free world and not follow it. Other nations have been more outspoken. So, I hope that we'll hear more of this because young men and women taking to the streets in Tehran need our support. The signs are in English. They're basically asking for us to speak up on their behalf."
"There's a lot of people talking about elitism and all of that.Yes, I went to Princeton and Harvard, but the lens through which I see the world is the lens that I grew up with. I am the product of a working class upbringing."
"I can guarantee that not because I give Attorney General [Loretta] Lynch a directive. That is institutionally how we have always operated. I do not talk to the attorney general about pending investigations [On Hillary Clinton]."
"When I was in Washington, I would usually get home from the Capitol at about 7:30 or 8, and I would try to write as much as possible. It was almost all in the wee hours."
"I have to say that my kids, like every child in America, is completely absorbed with Harry Potter. And so, I have gotten sucked into it, too; I can't wait for the next one to come out. I am trying to figure out what happens with Harry and Voldemort. So we have been reading that."
"I think at a certain age I became conscious of the power of words. And it was fairly late. I was kind of a goofball - but I was always subconsciously thinking about issues."
"Our politics at its best involves us recognizing ourselves in each other. And our politics at its worst are when we see immigrants or women or blacks or gays or Mexicans as somehow separate, apart from us."
"As an elected official who comes from the African-American community, there are some similarities. You are always trying to reconcile your own personal biography and affiliations with the demands of the broader democracy. And you need to make sure you are representing everybody."
"I didn't have a perfect model, but I wanted to try to blend my own personal reflections and experiences with this broader canvas to see how a lot of the narratives we have about economy and foreign policy got stuck. Because we have these categories of liberal, conservative, free marketer, open government - all these stereotypes about our politics and the categories we try to put things in are inadequate to this sort of complex, ambiguous, sometimes contradictory experience we have as ordinary people and that I have as an elected official."
"The memoir was a very personal book. I wrote it as a personal journey and search about who my father was and how my family had come together and come apart - sorting all that out, you know, issues of personal identity."
"Nobody's cooler than my two girls. They just seem to take whatever comes with, you know - happiness and - steadiness. And they're loving school. They're making friends... and - they've already joined some clubs. And Sasha, you know - I think maybe to endear - myself to her, she - she decided she wanted to join a basketball team. So - what more could I want?"
"I don't wanna preempt an announcement next week. And there's a lot of technical aspects to it. And if I - say - that we're doing one thing. then the markets might interpret it differently from what it ends up being."
"Some banks won’t make it. Other banks are going to make sure that we strengthen. All deposits are going to be safe for ordinary people, but we’re going to have to bring out some of these bad assets."
"The banks, because of mismanagement, because of huge risk taking, are now in very vulnerable positions. We can expect that we're gonna have to do more to shore up the financial system. We also are gonna have to make sure that we set up financial regulations so that not only does this never happen again, but you start having some sort of - trust in how the credit markets work again."
"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…"
"We can lead this world and make it safer and more secure for our children and our grandchildren, for generations to come."