To call the American role in the world imperial was, for many who did so, a way of asserting that the United States was misusing its power beyond its borders and, in so doing, subverting its founding political principles within them.

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.

People do not change when you tell them they should; they change when they tell themselves they must.

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

Inequality of any kind, once considered a normal, natural part of human existence, came to be seen in the course of the twentieth century as increasingly illegitimate.

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

The world needs a strong America.