I think you'd change Alabama fundamentally if in six years someone said, 'If you want the best education in America, you've got to live in Alabama.' you'd change economic development, change the image of this state, you'd offer these kids an opportunity they otherwise would never have had.

Government does not create jobs. It only helps create the conditions that make jobs more or less likely.

No skill shapes a child's future success in school or in life more than the ability to read.

In a time of tight budgets, difficult choices have to be made. We must make sure our very limited resources are spent on priorities. I believe we should have no higher priority than investing in our children's classrooms and in their future.

I ask you: turn a deaf ear to the special interests. Let politics stand down for a while. don't waste anytime thinking about future elections until we've done our jobs here.

According to our Christian ethics, we're supposed to love God, love each other and help take care of the poor. It is immoral to charge somebody making $5,000 an income tax.

Nothing is worse, or more of a breach of the social contract between citizen and state, than for government officials, bureaucrats and agencies to waste the money entrusted to them by the people they serve.