Today's headlines and history's judgment are rarely the same. If you are too attentive to the former, you will most certainly not do the hard work of securing the latter.

I think our dependence on foreign oil is a real problem, potential Achilles heel, and we have to do something about it.

My favorite quote is Thomas Jefferson`s "The God who gave us life gave us liberty at the same time." Well, he was a slave-owner. But these institutions, while they weren't perfect at the time, did allow people to prosper and to continue to struggle and build toward them. That's what you need, is good institutions and I think people will eventually live up to them.

When you're in government, of course, you have protection and you have people who are looking out for your wellbeing, but you can't live in a state of fear. If you do, you're not going to do your job very well and you're going to give yourself high blood pressure, which probably isn't worth it.

First, I wanted to answer the question I'm most frequently asked: "How did you become who you are?" Well, you had to know John and Angelena Rice.

For 60 years, my country, the United States, pursued stability at the expense of democracy in this region, here in the Middle East, and we achieved neither.

I've never really been a workaholic.