If I was to describe myself in terms of a political philosophy, I'd cast myself as a social and economic liberal, which is typically what people describe as being left-of-centre on social issues and right-of-centre on economic issues.

What I am interested in are the philosophies of the future. That's what drives me.

What I would like to build is a new centre, a wider, broader centre, which would encompass a lot of different philosophies - you know, the philosophy that I'm putting forward that is a market liberal philosophy and a socially liberal philosophy but would have room in it for a broader church than that.

I'll demand of myself and my own government what, in the past, I insisted of others.

And I always like to stress, it's not a quota, not a set-aside, it's not about race, it's about giving opportunities to demonstrate their abilities to do work with the Federal Government.

Government does not create jobs, but it can help set the table for economic growth with the right policies.

We have held forums here at the White House on workplace flexibility, and the first major bill signed into law by President Obama was the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act. Lilly was here a few weeks ago because we were trying very hard to push paycheck fairness through the Congress. Unfortunately, we fell two votes short.

Government and businesses cannot function without enormous amounts of data, and many people have to have access to that data.