Quote collection
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"In the midst of this enormous economic crisis, I think Canada has shown itself to be a pretty good manager of the financial system and the economy in ways that we always - haven't always been here in the United States."
"I know that gaps can be closed. And they can be closed substantially, more than I think we believe."
"The 20th Century was a bloodbath, and for all the frustrations and failures of the project to unify Europe, the last five decades have been periods of unprecedented peace, growth, and prosperity in Europe."
"If everything seems to be the same and no distinctions are made, then we won't know what to protect. We won't know what to fight for."
"I think what is true is that there's been an underlying division in the United States. Some of it has to do with the fact that economic growth and recovery tends to be stronger in the cities and in urban areas. In some rural areas, particularly those that were reliant on manufacturing, there has been weaker growth, stagnation, people feeling as if their children won't do as well as they will."
"I try to make it a rule not to meddle in other people's politics."
"Sometimes it may seem as if progress is stalled but what history of post-war Germany shows is that strength and determination and focus and adherence to the values that we care about will result in a better future for our children and our grandchildren."
"Certainly I've appreciated Angela Merkel as a partner."
"One of the things you learn as president is, as powerful as this office is, you have limited bandwidth. And the time goes by really quickly and you're constantly making choices, and there are pressures on you from all different directions - pressures on your attention, not just pressures from different constituencies. And so you have to be pretty focused about where can you have the biggest, quickest impact."
"I have got to figure out a system because I have bad filing, sorting, and organizing habits."
"I think my most important advice is to understand what are the foundations of a healthy democracy and how we have to engage in citizenship continuously, not just when something upsets us; not just when there's an election or when an issue pops up for a few weeks. It's hard work."
"If people, whether they are conservative or liberal, left or right, are unwilling to compromise and engage in the democratic process, and are taking absolutist views, and demonizing opponents, then democracy will break down."
"[Young people] are showing enormous and entrepreneurship and working with each other across borders."
"If I were German and I had a vote, I might support Angela Merkel."
"The first thing I would do would be to move forward with an agenda to make sure that we give D.C. the opportunity to elect its own representatives and have some political power on Capitol Hill."
"I think we would have made a lot more mistakes and would have accomplished a lot less had we not been grounded in some basic truths."
"I continue to believe when I said in Hanover, that the E.U. remains one of the world's great political and economic achievements, and that those achievements should not be taken for granted."
"People are discouraged from voting and part of what is important for Latino citizens is to make your voice heard, because you're not just speaking for yourself. You're speaking for family members, friends, classmates of yours in school."
"If you have a family member who maybe is undocumented, then you have an even greater reason to vote."
"I think when you're governing, it will become increasingly apparent that if you were to just eliminate trade deals with Mexico, for example, well, you've got a global supply chain. The parts that are allowing auto plants that were about to shut down to now employ double shifts is because they're bringing in some of those parts to assemble out of Mexico. And so it's not as simple as it might have seemed."