The United States is still seen as the leader at the world that wants to be free.

You have to create circumstances where your first-tier leader knows what you are trying to accomplish, because he is the one who's going to get it done.

We are rather candid with them about the nature of their political processes and the state of development of their institutions, but they are looking to the West because they know that's where success lies.

I would caution my Republican friends that [Obama has] three years to go, and in that three years the American people are going to want to see some progress and not just claims that this guy is out of office and we're going to do everything to destroy him or that somehow he is a 'socialist' taking over the country. Have we so lost our faith in this country that we think one person, one man can be can suddenly change our entire system? That's kind of absurd.

Every human endeavor has leaders and followers, and your job as a leader is to inspire.

Failure is a part of life and you have to learn to deal with it. Failure is something that is part of life's cycle and it's from failure that you gain life experience.

Service-learning is a particularly fertile way of involving young people in community service, because it ties helping others to what they are learning in the classroom. It enables them to apply academic disciplines to practical, everyday problems. In the process, it provides a compelling answer to the adolescent's perennial question, 'Why do I need to learn this stuff?