The Information Age is, first and foremost, an education age, in which education must start at birth and continue throughout a lifetime. Last year, from this podium, I said that education has to be our highest priority. I have something to say to every family listening to us tonight: Your children can go on to college.... Because of the things that have been done, we can make college as universal in the 21st century as high school is today. And, my friends, that will change the face and future of America.

When, President Bush asks me to go with his father to the Tsunami impacted areas and help raise money, I was thrilled to do that, because I think we have to always keep looking for common ground.

When we put aside partisanship, embrace the best ideas regardless of where they come from and work for principled compromise, we can move America not left or right, but forward.

Rarely have Americans lived through so much change, in so many ways, in so short a time. Quietly, but with gathering force, the ground has shifted beneath our feet as we have moved into an Information Age, a global economy, a truly new world.

Now, people ask me all the time how we got four surplus budgets in a row. What new ideas did we bring to Washington? I always give a one-word answer: Arithmetic.

I tried marijuana once. I did not inhale.

If you want to be forgiven, you have to extend forgiveness, even to people who aren't smart enough to ask for it.