I want to say to you is that James Madison and Thomas Jefferson did not intend to drive a stake in the heart of religion and to drive it out of our public life. What they intended to do was to set up a system so that we could bring religion into our public life and into our private life without any of us telling the other what to do.

Think of the great spirits of the last 50 years: Ghandi killed, not by a Pakistani Muslim, but one of his own Hindus, who hated him because he wanted India for the Muslims, the Sikhs, for everybody; Sadat, killed by the organization that Mr. bin Laden's No. 2 heads now, not by an Israeli, but by an Egyptian. My friend Yitzhak Rabin -- after a lifetime defending Israel, killed -- not by a Palestinian terrorist, but an angry Israeli because he wanted to lay down arms and take up peace... Fanatics are defined by their hatreds; free people by their humanity.

I don't mind the debates, they're good for America, but we shouldn't be out there attacking each other all the time.

Being President is a little like being the grounds-keeper at a cemetery: there's plenty of people below you but no one's listening.

We've had periods of meanness in American politics. Actually, the dawn of partisan division in America was basically in George Washington's second term, when it was obvious that he would be the first and only consensus president.

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.

You know, everybody makes mistakes when they are president.