There's no straight line to progress.

So just to be clear, I'm not going to sign any package that somehow prevents the top rate from going up for folks at the top 2 percent.

What is portrayed as high-minded positions on issues sometimes is just designed to carve out some of their commercial interests.

Let us each of us now embrace with solemn duty, and awesome joy, what is our lasting birthright. With common effort and common purpose, with passion and dedication, let us answer the call of history and carry into an uncertain future that precious light of freedom.

I continue to believe when I said in Hanover, that the E.U. remains one of the world's great political and economic achievements, and that those achievements should not be taken for granted.

I have complete confidence in the American people and our legal traditions and the prosecutors, the tough prosecutors from New York who specialize in terrorism.

Contrary to the claims of some of my critics and some of the editorial pages, I am an ardent believer in the free market.