Washington's character was rock solid. He came to stand for the new nation and its republican virtues, which was why he became our first President by unanimous choice.

Nothing is inevitable in life. People make choices, and those choices have results, and we all live with the results.

Almost everything Truman did in foreign affairs I approve of.

World War II, the atomic bomb, the Cold War, made it hard for Americans to continue their optimism.

In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries you have these great nation states hurling their young men at one another. The victory was really going to rest on who could do the best job of bringing up their kids to become efficient and effective soldiers. That's pretty grandiose, I guess, but I do think that, and thank God it's been the armies of democracy that have emerged from this as the triumphant armies.

We know how to win wars. We must learn now to win peace.

The past is a source of knowledge, and the future is a source of hope. Love of the past implies faith in the future.