When the Lord calls me home, whenever that may be, I will leave with the greatest love for this county of ours and eternal optimism for its future.

What's happening in Cuba is not a failure of the Cuban people. It's a failure of Fidel Castro and the Communists.

Unless bureaucracy is constantly resisted, it breaks down representative government and overwhelms democracy.

We're approaching the end of a bloody century plagued by a terrible political invention, totalitarianism. Optimism comes less easily today, not because democracy is less vigorous, but because democracy's enemies have refined their instruments of repression.

If history teaches anything, it teaches self-delusion in the face of unpleasant facts is folly.

I once played a sheriff who thought he could do the job without a gun. I was dead in twenty-seven minutes of a thirty minute show.

They don't worship at the altar of forced busing and mandatory quotas. They don't believe you can remedy past discrimination by mandating new discrimination. (Defending his nominees for Civil Rights Commission)