It is our character that supports the promise of our future - far more than particular government programs or policies.

People of good character are not all going to come down on the same side of difficult political and social issues. Good people - people of character and moral literacy - can be conservative, and good people can be liberal. We must not permit our disputes over thorny political questions to obscure the obligation we have to offer instruction to all our young people in the area in which we have, as a society, reached a consensus: namely, on the importance of good character, and some of its pervasive particulars.

Government, obviously, cannot fill a child's emotional needs. Nor can it fill his spiritual and moral needs. Government is not a father or mother. Government has never raised a child, and it never will.

The President is the symbol of who the people of the United States are. He is the person who stands for us in the eyes of the world and the eyes of our children.

The history of our nation is intertwined with a certain religious tradition, and that the First Amendment was not intended to result in the complete exclusion of religious beliefs from our public classrooms.

A weakened sense of responsibility does not weaken the fact of responsibility.

Too much of anything, even a good thing, may prove to be our undoing...[We] need ...to set definite boundaries on our appetites.