“Barack Obama strikes me as a man of strong principles and weak convictions – the kind of guy who would rather teach constitutional law than practice it, or who’d rather watch the match alone on TV than arm-wrestle his opponents.”

Professionals give advice; pilgrims share wisdom.

Barack Obama treated too lightly the people and forces determined to destroy him. They spat in his face and didn’t even get ticketed for a misdemeanor.

If the watchdog doesn’t bark, how do you know there’s a burglar in the basement? And the press is supposed to be a watchdog.

Creativity is piercing the mundane to find the marvelous.

I approach the end of my own long run believing more strongly than ever that the quality of journalism and the quality of democracy are inextricably joined … .

I’m angry at what’s happening to America and angry with myself that I can’t do more. I would be miserable if I couldn’t bear witness.

America’s corporate and political elites now form a regime of their own and they’re privatizing democracy. All the benefits – the tax cuts, policies and rewards flow in one direction: up.

This “degenerate and unlovely age,” as one historian calls it, exists in the mind of Karl Rove the reputed brain of George W. Bush as the seminal age of inspiration for politics and governance of America today.

Journalists who make mistakes get sued for libel; historians who make mistakes get to publish a revised edition.

I can’t speak for a war that I believe is immoral.

We don’t care really about children as a society and television reflects that indifference to children as human beings.

There’s hardly a more bitter pill to take than when a President disappoints the people who most believed in him.

Here is the crisis of the times as I see it: We talk about problems, issues, policies, but we don’t talk about what democracy means – what it bestows on us.

A people made morbidly obese in mind and spirit by the junk food of propaganda is less inclined to put up a fight, ask questions and be skeptical. And just as a democracy can die of too many lies, that kind of orthodoxy can kill us, too.

Democracy may not prove in the long run to be as efficient as other forms of government, but it has one saving grace: it allows us to know and say that it isn’t.

I believe democracy requires a ‘sacred contract’ between journalists and those who put their trust in us to tell them what we can about how the world really works.

I pledge to you today that as president, in my first budget, I will introduce the largest increase in special education ever.

Even the President needs passion.

The President Barack Obama had suggested that I not watch the news during the confirmation process. I assiduously followed his advice.

I am running for president to return our country to the principles of liberty and limited government.

Hitler didn’t snub me – it was our president who snubbed me. The president didn’t even send me a telegram.

President Obama is the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people.

If in doubt, move decisions up to the President.

Preserve the President’s options. He may need them.