Southerners, whose ancestors a hundred years ago knew the horrors of a homeland devastated by war, are particularly determined that war shall never come to us again. All Americans understand the basic lessons of history: that we need to be resolute and able to protect ourselves, to prevent threats and domination by others.

A strong nation, like a strong person, can afford to be gentle, firm, thoughtful, and restrained. It can afford to extend a helping hand to others. It's a weak nation, like a weak person, that must behave with bluster and boasting and rashness and other signs of insecurity.

One of the greatest concerns that I had when I became President was the vast array of nuclear weapons in the arsenals of the United States and the Soviet Union and a few other countries, and also the great proliferation of conventional weapons, non-nuclear weapons, particularly as a tremendous burden on the economies of developing or very poor countries.

To deal with individual human needs at the everyday level can be noble sometimes.

In the United States, you might say every county has got its own separate system. There's not even one kind of ballot that you use all over the United States. We require that in a foreign country.

Nearly all inmates are drawn from the ranks of the powerless and the poor. A child of privilege frequently receives the benefit of the doubt; a child of poverty seldom does.

I have come to realize that in every person there is something fine and pure and noble, along with a desire for self-fulfillment.