The first week or day that Obama was in office, he made it clear that peace in the Middle East would be a high priority for him. And his choice of a special envoy, George Mitchell, compared to the previous special envoys chosen, is remarkable.

There is absolutely no difference between religion and politics at all in Jesus' time. In other words, every seemingly religious word that came out of Jesus' mouth had very clear and unmistakable political connotations to it.

My advice for Obama concerning Iran is just to do what you already promised you would do, open up communications with Iran. Which is what I did after the Shah was deposed, as you know when the revolutionary government came in, I still had diplomatic relations with Iran, otherwise the hostages wouldn't have been there. We had about, as you know, 60 some diplomats in Iran, they had about the same number in Washington.

The idea of literalism in the Bible is a very new phenomenon. In many ways, it's a product of the scientific revolution.

Religion doesn't make people bigots. People are bigots and they use religion to justify their ideology.

I think that in many ways, some of those who did vote for Trump are sorry that they did so. But the hope, at least, is that we have a chance to make up for those kinds of mistakes.

A politician is a politician whether he's wearing a suit or a funny hat.