perhaps I possess a certain Midwestern sensibility that I inherited from my mother and her parents, a sensibility that Warren Buffet seems to share: that at a certain point one has enough, that you can derive as much pleasure from a Picasso hanging in a museum as from one that's hanging in your den, that you can get an awfully good meal in a restaurant for less than twenty dollars, and that once your drapes cost more than the average American's yearly salary, then you can afford to pay a bit more in taxes.

I don't regret the excitement, because I do think that it helped us accomplish as much as we did.

You can’t let your failures define you. You have to let your failures teach you.

The Russians don't make determinations about what our defense posture is.

It [is] that courage that Africa most desperately needs.

The shadow of crisis has passed, and the State of the Union is strong.

I think that I'm a better speechwriter than my speechwriters. I know more about policies on any particular issue than my policy directors. And I'll tell you right now that I'm gonna think I'm a better political director than my political director.