Quote collection
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"What we can do is make sure that Afghanistan is not a safe haven for Al Qaeda. What we can do it make sure that it is not destabilizing neighboring Pakistan, which has nuclear weapons. The key is we’ve got to have a clear objective..."
"We are not going to be able to rebuild Afghanistan into a Jeffersonian democracy."
"If we don’t uphold our Constitution and our values, that over time, that will make us less safe and that will be a recruitment tool for organizations like Al Qaeda. That’s what I have to keep my eye on."
"People have to recognize that it’s going to take some time for trust to be built not only between Democrats and Republicans, between Congress and the White House, between the House and the Senate. You know, we’ve had a dysfunctional political system for a while now."
"If you look at the current Mosul campaign against ISIL, for example the few thousand troops that we have there to support that effort allows the Iraqi military to move forward in an effective way."
"We've been able to build up the Afghan security forces and stabilize it."
"On the one hand information is moving quick or the way in which people consume information is changing so fast. Clearly this worked for [Donald Trump], and it gives him a direct connection to a lot of the people that voted for him."
"You [as a president] have to have a strong team around you. You have to have respect for institutions and the process to make good decisions because you are inherently reliant on other folks."
"I hope that this [hacking] does not continue to be viewed purely through a partisan lens.I think there are Republicans as well as Democrats who are concerned about this."
"I think there are a lot of factors going into an election. I think the bottom line is - is that Donald Trump is gonna be sworn in as the 45th President of the United States of America. And it's not necessarily profitable to sort of try to untangle all the different factors that went into it."
"If we have Osama bin Laden in our sights and the Pakistani government is unable or unwilling to take them out, then, I think that we have to act and we will take them out. We will kill bin Laden. We will crush al Qaeda. That has to be our biggest national security priority."
"We've got to identify new strategies to use cleaner energy, because that is a recipe for reducing the overall amount of pollution that's out there."
"If war explodes in Sudan, it could have a destabilizing effect that creates more space for terrorist activity that could eventually be directed at our homeland."
"Historically - when you look at how America has evolved, typically we make progress on race relations in fits and starts. We make some progress, and then there's maybe some slippage."
"What has made America the wealthiest, most successful country on Earth historically has been our commitment to education."
"I became a lightning rod for some partisan battles. I could not be prouder of the track record we've put together. By almost every measure, the country is significantly better off than when I came in."
"A political candidacy built around hope and change and compromise would eventually become a presidency of crisis and confrontation."
"For America to get more entangled militarily in Syria is a serious step, and we have to do so making absolutely certain that we know who we are helping; that we're not putting arms in the hands of folks who eventually could turn them against us or allies in the region."
"I have to be able to implement a policy that doesn't completely erase borders and boundaries. Not because I think that Honduran child who's gotten here is less worthy of love, attention, opportunity than my child, but because I'm the president of the United States of America and I'm not speaking as a religious leader."
"Rather take that moral sense and apply it to the particulars of a job that is going to test those ethical and moral precepts differently than if you're a professor, or a business person, or a dad. And if I were not comfortable with the judicious use of our military to protect the American people, than I shouldn't have run for president. And having said that, I do think that the wisdom of a [Martin Luther] King or a [Mahatma] Gandhi can inform my decisions."