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?

How can we be enemies when there is so much that pulls us together? But in general I found that I had to work with each one of my foreign colleagues in a way that was consistent with their system. Some are democracies, some are not.

We have to start thinking of America as a family. We have to stop screeching screeching at each other, stop hurting each other, and instead start caring for, sacrificing for and sharing with each other ... We cannot move forward if cynics and critics swoop down and pick apart anything that goes wrong, to a point where we lose sight of what is right, decent and uniquely good about America.

Treat people kindly. When you are kind to somebody and I don't mean necessarily "buddy-buddy", just show kindness and consideration. Show that people are worthy and you respect them and you are glad they're with you.

Terrorism threat is serious, and not just to American interests. The assaults in Russia against two airliners, bringing them out of the sky, and against a subway station, and then that horrible scene at the school in Beslan. This kind of terrorist activity no one is immune from it. And so it suggests that we have to do even more together to make sure the civilized worlds join together in the war against terrorism.

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.

If it ain't broke, don't fix it' is the slogan of the complacent, the arrogant or the scared. It's an excuse for inaction, a call to non-arms.