Am I embarrassed to speak for a less than perfect democracy? Not one bit. Find me a better one. Do I suppose there are societies which are free of sin? No, I don't. Do I think ours is, on balance, incomparably the most hopeful set of human relations the world has? Yes, I do.

If we get into the mind-set where the good becomes the enemy of the best, we will get nothing.

To strip our past of glory is no great loss, but to deny it honor is devastating.

The world's largest debtor is a distinction of sorts, but not the one we like having.

The amount of violations of human rights in a country is always an inverse function of the amount of complaints about human rights violations heard from there. The greater the number of complaints being aired, the better protected are human rights in that country.

If the newspapers of a country are filled with good news, the jails of that country will be filled with good people.

A responsible government does not triple the national debt in eight years.