We think of violence as being conflict and fighting and wars and so forth, but the most ongoing horrific measure of violence is in the horrible poverty of the Third World... and the poverty in the United States as well. We have our own Third World here. And we have to first become aware of that and how to help and solve that.

I was the last one to join the cast of the west Wing and when I started it was just a peripheral character - the focus was to be on the staff, not the First Family. When I did the pilot, my contract was for just three years and it was confined to maybe three or four episodes every season. The only restraint I had was that I could not play another President while the show was on the air. So, I kind of backed into one of the great events of my life and certainly my career.

This Administration has led us into an area without vision. Bush has no clear understanding of what is being asked of the citizens, and the military is under his direction.

I sincerely believe that everything - everything - is grace, and you have to stick around long enough to see it through. I'm a very optimistic person.

Well, I think that Catholicism's basic foundation of faith is personal conscience. I think it's between you and God, not you and the Church.

Once you experience Third World poverty, you're really changed forever, if you're at all open to it, because we're all united in our common humanity. And we are so made as to feel something for people who are in pain. It's not possible to be human and to be unaffected by what you see in the third world.

I don't think that people in America are really given enough information about the Third World.