I've always believed the world would be a better place if more people everywhere have a chance to shape their own future and realize their full potential. I think that is what life is about.

No two countries that both had McDonald's had fought a war against each other since each got its McDonald's

I have no problem with a war for oil-if we accompany it with a real program for energy conservation. But when we tell the world we couldn't care less about climate change, that we feel entitled to drive whatever big cars we feel like, that we feel entitled to consume however much oil we like, the message we send is that a war for oil in the gulf is not a war to protect the world's right to economic survival-but our right to indulge. Now that will be seen as immoral.

I have a daughter who is a sophomore in college and another who is in the 11th grade of high school.

Optimists are usually wrong. But all the great change in history, positive change, was done by optimists.

Our bailout of Detroit will be remembered as the equivalent of pouring billions of taxpayers' money into the mail-order catalogue business on the eve of the birth of eBay.

The country that owns green, that dominates that industry, is going to have the most energy security, national security, economic security, competitive companies, healthy population and, most of all, global respect.