Surround yourself with the best people you can find, delegate authority, and don't interfere as long as the policy you've decided upon is being carried out.

I hope Americans will read and study the Bible in the coming year. It's my firm belief that the enduring values, as I say, presented in its pages have a great meaning for each of us and for our nation.

The future belongs to the free.

I was 21 and looking for work in 1932, one of the worst years of the Great Depression. And I can remember one bleak night in the thirties when my father learned on Christmas Eve that he'd lost his job. To be young in my generation was to feel that your future had been mortgaged out from under you, and that's a tragic mistake we must never allow our leaders to make again.

As for the enemies of freedom, those who are potential adversaries, they will be reminded that peace is the highest aspiration of the American people. We will negotiate for it, sacrifice for it, we will not surrender for it - now or ever.

The First Continental Congress made its first act a prayer, the beginning of a great tradition. We have then a lesson from the founders of our land. That lesson is clear: That in the winning of freedom and in the living of life, the first step is prayer.

I've said it before and I'll say it again. The U.S. Geological Survey has told me that the proven potential for oil in Alaska alone is greater than the proven reserves in Saudi Arabia.