You cannot be on one hand dedicated to peace and on the other dedicated to violence. Those two things are irreconcilable.

Great leaders never accept the world as it was and always work for the world as it should be

I remember at the time of 9/11 that there were women who went out of their way to escort Muslim women to grocery stores because they wanted to be sure that they didn't experience any prejudice. And so I'm not one who believes that America is a country that's intolerant. It's the most tolerant country in the world, and I really think that it's unfortunate that a number of people are trying to paint America with this brush. I just don't see it.

It's bad policy to speculate on what you'll do if a plan fails when you're trying to make a plan work.

Once a month I play with a chamber music quartet. I play almost no solo music anymore because I so enjoy the interaction. The members of my quartet have become some of my best friends and so I really enjoy it now in ways that I didn't before.

The problem here is that there will always be some uncertainty about how quickly Saddam can acquire nuclear weapons. But we don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.

The first Republican I knew was my father and he is still the Republican I most admire. He joined our party because the Democrats in Jim Crow Alabama of 1952 would not register him to vote. The Republicans did. My father has never forgotten that day, and neither have I.