Leadership has a harder job to do than just choose sides. It must bring sides together.

Hold your head high, stick your chest out. You can make it. It gets dark sometimes, but morning comes. Keep hope alive.

I was blessed to go abroad and bring Americans home from jail in Syria, and Iraq, and Cuba, and Yugoslavia, and Liberia, those are high moments of my life.

There have been more people disenfranchised in Washington than there have been in Kuwait.

There is no power in cynicism. There is no forward thrust in cynicism.

In Afghanistan, there is a plan to build democracy; hundreds of thousands of troops are protecting it. There is a plan to rebuild and reconstruct there. But many thousands of Americans die from violence and poverty every year and we don't have a plan for reconstruction at home.

In order for an ideal to become a reality, there must be a person, a personality to translate it.