"You're not a leader if you haven't been elected."

"I think I'm very hardheaded."

"Sometimes overturning brutal regimes takes time and costs lives. I wish it weren't so. I really, really do."

"I was not going to attack Palin just for being a woman appealing for support from other women."

"Hamas, we know, embeds missiles, embeds command-and-control units in civilian areas."

"Hamas, we know, embeds missiles, embeds command-and-control units in civilian areas."

"Everybody feels they have been trespassed upon, and nearly everybody has trespassed on somebody else, maybe not intentionally."

"I would be delighted if the United States could have a positive relationship with Russia, and I would be thrilled if the Russian people, who are so capable, had a normal country that they could chart a different future."

"When it comes to the Middle East, this is always a very difficult issue for any American president."

"There is no part of the world that is irrelevant to the United States anymore."

"I've often thought that the gauntlet of American politics is more individualistic, more expensive, more unpredictable than in many other democracies."

"I don't think it's at all weakening of the system if people with the same last name put themselves forward to the electorate, when their experiences, their character, and in my case, gender, may be different."

"I am repeating the facts and the facts are I did not send nor did I receive material marked classified."

"But I can tell you another engine for growth and job creation would be comprehensive immigration reform."

"Well, I will be a president for Democrats, Republicans and independents, for the struggling, the striving, the successful, for all those who vote for me and for those who don't. For all Americans together."

"In the aftermath of September 11, and as the 9/11 Commission report so aptly demonstrates, it is clear that our intelligence system is not working the way that it should."

"Countries that will not tax their elite who expect us to come in and help them serve their people are just not going to get the kind of help from us that historically they may have."

"I think I will serve as secretary of state as my last public position."

"On some campuses, change is effected through nonviolent or even violent means."

"We know in New York we have several million at any one time who are in New York illegally."

"It should never be a crime to be gay."

"In my family, we were Americans, we were Republicans and we were Methodists."

"I'm one of these very focused people when it comes to day-to-day work, and I'm trying not to think about what comes next so that I can stay very focused on what I'm doing now."

"I've been really at the highest levels of American political life."