Anti-Catholicism is the last respectable prejudice. You can't hate black people anymore, of course, and you can't hate homosexuals anymore, but you can hate all the Catholics you want.

Jack looked out the window as they passed the Mormon temple, just outside the beltway near Connecticut Avenue. A decidedly odd-looking building, it had grandeur with its marble columns and gilt spires. The beliefs represented by that impressive structure seemed curious to Ryan, a lifelong Catholic, but the people who held them were honest and hardworking, and fiercely loyal to their country, because they believed in what America stood for.

Most things in here don't react well to bullets.

Fix your eyes forward on what you can do, not back on what you cannot change.

The point of life was to press on, to do the best you can, to make the world a better place.

People live longer today than they ever have. They live happier lives, have more knowledge, more information. All this is the result of communications technology. How is any of that bad?

It's not right to say that our loss in Vietnam turned out to be a gain. But lessons were learned. And they were the right lessons.