Good morning, well, this is not how I expected to wake up this morning. After I received the news, Malia walked in, and said, "Daddy, you won the Nobel Peace Prize, and it is Bo’s birthday." And then Sasha added, "Plus we have a three-day weekend coming up." So it’s good to have kids to keep things in perspective. I am both surprised and deeply humbled by the decision of the Nobel committee, let me be clear, I do not view it as a recognition of my own accomplishments, but rather as an affirmation of American leadership on behalf of aspirations held by people in all nations.
To be honest, I do not feel that I deserve to be in the company of so many of the transformative figures who’ve been honored by this prize. Men and women, who’ve inspired me and inspired the entire world through their courageous pursuit of peace, but I also know that this prize reflects the kind of world that those men and women, and all Americans want to build a world that gives life to the promise of our founding documents.
And I know that throughout history, the Nobel Peace Prize has not just been used to honor specific achievement, it's also been used as a means to give more momentum to a set of causes. And that is why I will accept the award as a call to action, a call for all nations to confront the common challenges of the 21st century. These challenges can’t be met by any one leader or any one nation. And that’s why my administration’s worked to establish a new era of engagement in which all nations must take the responsibility for the world we seek. We can not tolerate a world in which nuclear weapons spread in more nations, and in which the terror of a nuclear holocaust endangers more people.
That’s why we’ve begun to take concrete steps to pursue a world without nuclear weapons because all the nations have the right to pursue peaceful nuclear power, but all nations have the responsibility to demonstrate their peaceful intentions.
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