Barack Obama: “I came here because you, the graduates, inspire me.”

She knew she was going to mess me up, and she did it anyway.

Every president here today, as different as we are, has tried our best to uphold the values that John McCain and Mitt Romney believed in no less than I did.

We’ve now fought a war, spent billions and billions of dollars, you know, put enormous strain on our military. A lot of people have died. And it feels like we’re back where we were before we started the war, except maybe a little bit worse…

They're meant to remind us of who we can be, to remind us of what's possible, so we can forge ahead.