My first guiding principle is this: willing and active co-operation between independent sovereign states. Europe will be stronger precisely because it has France as France, Spain as Spain, Britain as Britain, each with its own customs, traditions and identity. It would be folly to try to fit them into some sort of identikit European personality.

We should not expect the state to appear in the guise of an extravagant good fairy at every christening, a loquacious companion at every stage of life's journey, and the unknown mourner at every funeral.

Why in the world anyone in America is allowing another language (other than English) to be his first... I don't know

I have never knowingly made a non-controversial speech in my life.

We are very fortunate to have someone else's weapons stationed on our soil, to fight those targeted on us.

All corporatism - even when practised in societies where hard work, enterprise and cooperation are as highly valued as in Korea - encourages inflexibility, discourages individual accountability, and risks magnifying errors by concealing them.

What great cause would have been fought and won under the banner 'I stand for consensus'?