We are trying to make the world a better place, but that is not necessarily what we accomplish. Many of the problems which preoccupy us are basically insoluble.

I don't panic. The same thing applies to me as to everybody else, so I'm given to euphoria and despair. And I would say that I basically have survived by recognizing my mistakes.

Well, you know, I was a human being before I became a businessman.

Stock market bubbles don't grow out of thin air. They have a solid basis in reality, but reality as distorted by a misconception.

The world is looking to us for leadership. We have provided it in the past; the main reason why anti-American feelings are so strong in the world today is that we are not providing it in the present.

The integration of Europe was very much led by a Germany that was always willing to pay a little bit extra to reach a compromise that everybody accepted, because Germany was so eager to get European support for reunification. That was called the "farsighted vision," which created the European Union.

Most of the poverty and misery in the world is due to bad government, lack of democracy, weak states, internal strife, and so on.