You cannot be a party in stagnation. You have to have the constant reinvigoration of fresher ideas and the debate in terms of role of government and the rest is as ancient as - as old as America.

Anybody who's ever dealt with me knows not to mess with me.

I don't reject the concept of preemptive war. I'm a mother of five. I have five grandchildren. And I always say: Think of a lioness. Think of a mother bear. You come anywhere near our cubs, you're dead. And so, in terms of any threat to our country, people have to know we'll be there to preemptively strike. But what the president [Bush] did was, on the basis of no real intelligence for an imminent threat to our country, chose to go into a war for reasons that are still unknown to us.

Think of an economy where people could be an artist or a photographer or, eh, a writer without worrying about keeping their day job in order to have health insurance, or that people could start a business and be entrepreneurial and take risk but not be job-locked because a child has asthma or someone in the family is bipolar. You name it. Any condition is job-blocking.

I'm confident in the American people.

Being the first woman speaker and breaking the marble ceiling is pretty important. Now it's time to move on.

I believe that nothing has been more wholesome for America, for our government, for our politics, than the increased participation of women.