The single most exciting thing you encounter in government is competence, because it's so rare.

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

I have no doubt that there will continue to be bumps, some serious crises indeed in our relationship with China.... Neither membership in the WTO nor normalized trade relations with the United States will magically impose the rule of law on China or institute deep-seeded respect for human rights. But it certainly has potential to advance those purposes.

The central conservative truth is that it is culture, not politics, that determines the success of a society. The central liberal truth is that politics can change a culture and save it from itself.

The atmosphere in which social legislation is considered is not a friend of truth.

The great corporations of this country were not founded by ordinary people. They were founded by people with extraordinary intelligence, ambition, and aggressiveness.

People who pierce the veil of money rarely return with their faculties altogether intact.