Barack Obama: Being attentive to inequality and not tone deaf to it. B...

By 2016, the people who had looked to [Barack] Obama for change were looking somewhere else.

Barack Obama

barack somewhere-else people

Your kids grow up. I think they more than anything are making me feel as if, you know, you want to squeeze everything you got every single day out of this thing. Because it passes quick.

Barack Obama

growing-up kids thinking

I had said from the start that I thought Iraq was a mistake, that we should have stayed focused on Afghanistan. I think it was the right decision because the Taliban at that point had gotten a lot of momentum before I'd gotten into office, partly because we hadn't been paying attention as much as we needed to to Afghanistan.

Barack Obama

should-have mistake thinking

We were just at the beginnings of a recovery [in 2010]. And the, you know, whoever is president at that point is gonna get hit and his party's gonna get hit. That then means that suddenly you've got a redistricting in which a lot of state legislatures are now Republican. They draw lines that give a huge structural advantage in subsequent elections.

Barack Obama

recovery party mean

The two inaugurations were different. The first inauguration I was thinking to myself, "Let's make sure I don't screw this up." I think there is - people always talk about how cool I am. I don't care how cool you are.

Barack Obama

two people thinking

The most important thing we can do is to make sure that we are creating jobs in this country. But not just jobs, good paying jobs. Ones that can support a family.

Barack Obama

creating jobs country

We have seen violence and terror perpetrated by those who profess to stand up for faith, their faith. Professed to stand up for Islam, but in fact are betraying it. Humanity has been grappling with these questions throughout human history. And lest we get on our high horse and think this is unique to some other place, remember that during the Crusades and the Inquisition people committed terrible deeds in the name of Christ.

Barack Obama

horse unique thinking

I believe that the starting point of faith is some doubt, not bein' so full of yourself and so confident that you are right and that God speaks only to us and doesn't speak to others, that God only cares about us and doesn't care about others.

Barack Obama

care doubt believe

Our job is not to ask that God respond to our notion of truth. Our job is to be true to Him, Hi-His word and His commandments, and we should assume humbly that we're confused and don't always know what we're doin' and we're staggerin' and stumblin' towards him and have some humility in that process.

Barack Obama

confused assuming humility

Donald Trump is uniquely unqualified to be president.

Barack Obama

president

Here`s a guy who says he`s a great businessman. But it seems like a lot of Trump's business is built around stiffing small businesses and workers out of what he owes them, work they`ve done. He thinks that`s cute or smart or funny to basically not pay somebody who`s done work for him and say go ahead and sue me because I`ve got more money than you and you can`t do anything about it.

Barack Obama

smart cute thinking

I'm confident that America's foreign policy rebalance to the region will endure beyond my presidency because it's in the national interest of the United States.

Barack Obama

endure united-states america

My particular worries on any given day - how I'm doing in the polls or what somebody is saying about me... for good or for ill - isn't particularly relevant. What is relevant is: What am I building that lasts?

Barack Obama

building lasts worry

I was always amused that people were either skeptical or surprised that I would choose a Hillary Clinton as a secretary of state. To my mind, having somebody smart, tough, capable with her own stature, who could travel around the world and command the stage, was a huge asset.

Barack Obama

smart mind people

We should foster a culture in which people's private religious beliefs, including atheists and agnostics, are respected.

Barack Obama

atheist religious people

We seem to have trouble with [critical thinking]. And our political system doesn't help.

Barack Obama

political helping thinking

On issues like Ukraine, on issues like Syria, we've had very significant differences [with Russia].

Barack Obama

ukraine russia differences

To the extent that our political dialogue is such where everything is under suspicion, everybody is corrupt and everybody is doing things for partisan reasons, and all of our institutions are full of malevolent actors - if that's the storyline that's being put out there by whatever party is out of power, then when a foreign government introduces that same argument with facts that are made up, voters who have been listening to that stuff for years, who have been getting that stuff every day from talk radio or other venues, they're going to believe it.

Barack Obama

party government believe

There are times where I've made mistakes or our administration hasn't always aligned ourselves with the values we need to align ourselves with. It's a work of constant improvement.

Barack Obama

administration mistake needs

There are legitimate concerns and anxieties that the forces of globalisation are leaving too many people behind - and we have to take those concerns seriously and address them. But the answer isn't to turn inward and embrace protectionism. We can't just walk away from trade.

Barack Obama

anxiety leaving people

Being attentive to inequality and not tone deaf to it. But offering prescriptions that are actually going to help folks in communities that feel forgotten. That's going to be our most important strategy. And I think we can successfully do that.