Change makes us confront the great unknown. It introduces different things into our lives. Different places. Different ideas. Different people. It's all hard to accept at times, and change can often be a little scary. But if there's one fact that I've learned from raising a family, from running several businesses, from serving in Congress and now as Governor, it's that nothing has ever grown without changing.

We must now view our problems as opportunities - historic opportunities to change the failed systems of the past and do what's right for our future.

Ladies and gentlemen: There can be no greater investment in Alabama's future than an investment in education.

If my house is on fire, I don't need the fire chief telling me I should not have built the house out of wood. I need somebody to put the fire out.

You elected government officials to make decisions and it's about time they started making good ones

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.