This idea of purity and that you’re never compromised and you’re always politically woke — you should get over that quickly. … The world is messy. Th… - Barack Obama

Meanwhile, bank executives bristled — sometimes privately, but often in the press — at any suggestion that they had in any way screwed up, or should be subject to any constraints when it came to running their business. This last bit of chutzpah was most pronounced in the two savviest operators on Wall Street, Lloyd Blankfein of Goldman Sachs and Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan Chase, both of whom insisted that their institutions had avoided the poor management decisions that plagued other banks and neither needed nor wanted government assistance. These claims were true only if you ignored the fact that the solvency of both outfits depended entirely on the ability of the Treasury and the Fed to keep the rest of the financial system afloat, as well as the fact that Goldman in particular had been one of the biggest peddlers of subprime-based derivatives — and had dumped them onto less sophisticated customers right before the bottom fell out.

It is entirely legitimate for the American people to be deeply concerned when you’ve got a bunch of violent, vicious zealots who behead people or randomly shoot a bunch of folks in a deli in Paris.

As for our common defense, we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals. Our Founding Fathers, faced with perils we can scarcely imagine, drafted a charter to assure the rule of law and the rights of man, a charter expanded by the blood of generations. Those ideals still light the world, and we will not give them up for expedience's sake. And so to all other peoples and governments who are watching today, from the grandest capitals to the small village where my father was born: know that America is a friend of each nation and every man, woman, and child who seeks a future of peace and dignity, and that we are ready to lead once more.