"If we are going to try to get across to the poorest people in the world that we care about their plight and we want them to join one world with the rest of us, we have got to make promises and keep promises."

"But we will say something else. That for far too long in this country, people who can work, people who are able to work, and people who choose not to work: you cannot go on claiming welfare like you are now."

"We have the character of an island nation: independent, forthright, passionate in defence of our sovereignty. We can no more change this British sensibility than we can drain the English Channel. And because of this sensibility, we come to the European Union with a frame of mind that is more practical than emotional."

"Britain is characterized not just by its independence but, above all, by its openness."

"Western history has been a history of deed done, actions performed and results achieved."

"For the very first time the young are seeing history being made before it is censored by their elders."

"Over the objections, where they sound like squealing pigs, over the objections of Romney and all his allies, we passed some of the toughest Wall Street regulations in history, turning Wall Street back into the allocator of capital it always has been and no longer a casino. And they want to repeal it."

"A great empire, like a great cake, is most easily diminished at the edges."