There's only one person who hugs the mothers and the widows, the wives and the kids upon the death of their loved one. Others hug but having committed the troops, I've got an additional responsibility to hug and that's me and I know what it's like.

We Americans have faith in ourselves, but not in ourselves alone. We do not know-we do not claim to know all the ways of Providence, yet we can trust in them, placing our confidence in the loving God behind all of life, and all of history.

Each of us will figure out our own way.

There's just something about this job as president every president faces, you know, that you think one thing going in and then the pressures of the job or the realities of the world, you know, are different than you thought.

Freedom is on the march in this world. I believe everybody in the Middle East desires to live in freedom. I believe women in the Middle East want to live in a free society. I believe mothers and fathers want to raise their children in a free and peaceful world. I believe all these things, because freedom is not America's gift to the world, freedom is the almighty God's gift to each man and woman in this world.

I believe the world would have been a lot worse off if Saddam [Hussein] were in power today.

Civility is not a tactic or a sentiment. It is the determined choice of trust over cynicism, of community over chaos.