I was in elective politics for 24 years. I've made four national races, two for president, two for vice president. I have found there are other ways to serve, and I'm enjoying them.

During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet. I took the initiative in moving forward a whole range of initiatives that have proven to be important to our country's economic growth and environmental protection, improvements in our educational system.

Our democracy, our constitutional framework is really a kind of software for harnessing the creativity and political imagination for all of our people. The American democratic system was an early political version of Napster.

You see that pale, blue dot? That's us. Everything that has ever happened in all of human history, has happened on that pixel. All the triumphs and all the tragedies, all the wars all the famines, all the major advances... it's our only home. And that is what is at stake, our ability to live on planet Earth, to have a future as a civilization. I believe this is a moral issue, it is your time to seize this issue, it is our time to rise again to secure our future.

I flew on Air Force Two for eight years, and now I have to take off my shoes to get on an aeroplane.

I understand that being optimistic in this age is challenging, but I am optimistic nonetheless.

Some people accuse me of exaggeration, so let me be clear. Those people seek nothing less than the complete and utter destruction of the American way of life.