This system, built on free markets, free trade and free peoples and American protection, that's what got us from the end of World War II to the extraordinary events of the end of the Cold War and a system that was one of prosperity and peace for a lot of people, including for the United States.

Our effort to build stability through authoritarians in the Middle East for 60 years had given us neither democracy nor stability.

Any time you have a situation in which you are calling for more time rather than calling for Iraq to immediately comply, it plays into the hands of Saddam Hussein.

In the segregated South, education was almost like armor. It was a way to put yourself in a category where even with the slings and arrows and humiliations of racism and segregation, somehow you had better control of the situation. I always said my parents understood that you might not be able to control your circumstances, but they and their parents believed that you could control your reaction to your circumstances.

I learned a lot about my parents, who were both teachers. I had known that my parents were very strongly in favor of education. I had known that they had an impact on a lot of people, but people came out of the woodwork who have said, "You know, without your father, I would never have gone to college," very successful people. And so I learned how widespread their educational evangelism really was.

What I tell student athletes is first of all, you've made good choices this far in order to be able to be in college and to be an athlete. Keep making good choices.

Democratic openings that come about in that way - the overthrow of a totalitarian government by external powers - it makes it really hard to make those first steps toward democracy.