Individual responsibility, hard work, paying attention in school, faith, family all these things are important.

If you are explaining, you are losing.

Individual responsibility, hard work, paying attention in school, faith, family all these things are important.

I'm looking forward to the day when America will mature to the point that we are a color-blind society. I'm not so sure that in politics that will ever be reality, because politics has a way of separating us based on skin color.

My views on everything from welfare to a balanced budget to affirmative action can be traced to what Buddy and Helen Watts taught me as a young boy growing up poor but proud in Eufaula.

They said that I had sold out and (am an) Uncle Tom. And I said well, they deserve to have that view. But I have my thoughts. And I think they're race-hustling poverty pimps.

I was taught to respect everyone for the simple reason that we're all God's children. I was taught, in the words of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.... to judge a man not by the color of his skin, but by the content of his character. And I was taught that character...is simply doing what's right when nobody's looking.