The root cause of poverty is social injustice and the bad government that abets it

President Kennedy didn't negotiate out of the Cuban missile crisis simply because he and Khrushchev got along well. Khrushchev didn't have the cards.

The one thing the terrorists cannot do -- not one of them, not 10 of them, not 10,000 of them -- they cannot change who we are.

In the army we are drilled into execution and then supervision, to make sure everything goes the way you planned it. But there is another thing that we do in the military, that I think perhaps isn't done enough in corporate life: As soon as you have made that decision, you start on the contingency planning. Because there is, as we like to say, a thinking, breathing enemy out there, who is not going to let you do just what you want.

No war on the face of the Earth is more destructive than the AIDS pandemic.

Don't be buffaloed by experts and elites. Experts often possess more data than judgment. Elites can become so inbred that they produce hemophiliacs who bleed to death as soon as they are nicked by the real world.

War should be the politics of last resort. And when we go to war, we should have a purpose that our people understand and support.