Some people wonder all their lives if they've made a difference. The Marines don't have that problem.

It has been said that politics is the second oldest profession. I have learned that it bears a striking resemblance to the first.

America has not been a story or a byword. That small community of Pilgrims prospered and, driven by the dreams and, yes, by the ideas of the Founding Fathers, went on to become a beacon to all the oppressed and poor of the world.

I like photographers - you don't ask questions. (To a gathering of the White House News Photographers Association)

I've spoken of the shining city all my political life, but I don't know if I ever quite communicated what I saw when I said it. But in my mind it was a tall, proud city built on rocks stronger than oceans, windswept, God-blessed, and teeming with people of all kinds living in harmony and peace; a city with free ports that hummed with commerce and creativity. And if there had to be city walls, the walls had doors and the doors were open to anyone with the will and heart to get there. That's how I saw it, and see it still.

Are you entitled to the fruits of your own labor or does government have some presumptive right to spend and spend and spend?

I won't hold my opponent's youth and inexperience against him.