Economic growth is necessary to keep the promise - enormously important to individual Americans - that each generation will have the opportunity to become more prosperous than the preceding one, the popular term for which is 'the American dream.

American foreign policy, for all its shortcomings, has underpinned political stability around the world.

The real threat to world stability is not too much American power. It is too little American power.

The American empire will not disappear... because America does not have an empire.

First of all, the world criticizes American foreign policy because Americans criticize American foreign policy. We shouldn't be surprised about that. Criticizing government is a God-given right - at least in democracies.

One thing worse than an America that is too strong, the world will learn, is an America that is too weak.

The American political system is so porous, it's so open, it's so frustrating for those who are trying to make policy.