“The quicker we get about the business of reducing our reliance on oil the better.”

History’s long arc is different than the today’s headlines.

In America, with education and hard work, it really does not matter where you came from; it matters only where you are going.

Every life is capable of greatness.

The best armor against everything around you is to be well educated, to work hard, to be twice as good as if you had to be, to do languages and culture better.

You can never ask others to do something you would not do. That is integrity.

Leading in a complex world means recognizing the simple things you can do to make things better.

We’re not going to negotiate about the terms of terrorism. You don’t negotiate about terrorism. It’s is wrong to engage in terrorism, and there isn’t anything to negotiate.

You cannot be on one hand dedicated to peace and on the other dedicated to violence. Those two things are irreconcilable.

If you cannot allow people to do their jobs, nobody with substance and creativity will work for you.

What you know today can affect what you do tomorrow, but not what you did yesterday.

The people of the Middle East share the desire for freedom. We have an opportunity – and an obligation – to help them turn this desire into reality.

We can’t rely – or no country can rely on just a single personality to carry it forward. And so what the American founding fathers understood was that institutions were built for human imperfection not human perfection.

When somebody underestimated me, it made me want to prove them wrong.

People may oppose you, but when they realize you can hurt them, they’ll join your side.

The problem here is that there will always be some uncertainty about how quickly Saddam can acquire nuclear weapons. But we don’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.

I hope that all of us who were fortunate enough to have benefited will put our time, our resources and our efforts into making sure that kids, particularly kids without means, have a way to achieve.

You don’t have to have perfect wisdom to get very rich – just a bit better than average over a long period of time.

The biggest price you pay for love is that you have to have somebody around, you can’t be on your own, which is always so much better.

I’m really big on day dates. If you go for a stroll, have a picnic or lunch with a glass of wine – it doesn’t get better than that.

My work is always better when I am alone and follow my own impressions.

The grandest of all laws is the law of progressive development. Under it, in the wide sweep of things, men grow wiser as they grow older, and societies better.

One stops being a child when one realizes that telling one’s trouble does not make it any better.

God never takes away something from your life without replacing it with something better.

I think you can challenge people, but you don’t want to break people down. But you’ve got to sometimes just pull them aside and say, you know, you’re OK but you could be better.