Our predecessors understood that the ties that bind America are far stronger than disagreements over any particular policy and far more durable and profound than any party affiliation.

It took me quite a long time to develop a voice, and now that I have it, I am not going to be silent.

You [young people] all are just much more internationally-minded and traveled and knowledgeable in languages than any other previous generation. So many of you are already doing a lot of international relations, I think. I so believe in student networks, and people that either study abroad or come to the United States to study, and the relationships that you all develop. You learn a lot from each other, but you all will see each other again in jobs along the way. And I think that makes a big difference. I so believe in what students can do.

I'm not a person who thinks the world would be entirely different if it was run by women. If you think that, you've forgotten what high school was like.

We live in an image society. Speeches are not what anybody cares about; what they care about is the picture.

In terms intellectually, [what] shaped my life was the whole Munich thing [the Munich Agreement] that I knew about all my life, in terms of how large powers make decisions that affect small countries, and the unintended consequences of that. The other part is I knew about the Holocaust. l just didn't know that it applied to my family. But that did affect the way I thought about what I was seeing as ethnic cleansing in the Balkans; there's no question about that.

The best book, like the best speech, will do it all - make us laugh, think, cry and cheer - preferably in that order.