Does anybody think these people were just sitting around drinking tea?
Power is nothing unless you can turn it into influence.
I use the word power broadly. Even more important than military and economic power is the power of ideas, the power of compassion, and the power of hope.
We don’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.
For 60 years, my country, the United States, pursued stability at the expense of democracy in this region, here in the Middle East, and we achieved neither.
But in terms of Saddam Hussein being there, let’s remember that his country is divided, in effect. He does not control the northern part of his country. We are able to keep arms from him. His military forces have not been rebuilt.
Democracy is the most realistic way for diverse peoples to resolve their differences, and share power, and heal social divisions without violence or repression.
You never cede control of your own ability to be successful to something called racism.
To say that people around the world deserve the same, the same life that we have in the United States, the same freedoms that we have, that seems to me, humble. I think it’s humble to say that the United States, which has been given so much, should give back.
I find that the great majority of public servants across the entire political spectrum come because they believe in the United States and they want to change the world.
What I tell student athletes is first of all, you’ve made good choices this far in order to be able to be in college and to be an athlete. Keep making good choices.
If I can look at your zip code and I can tell whether you’re going to get a good education, we’ve got a real problem.
Well, there are many things, whenever you look back, that you would’ve done differently. We’re all human. We do our best at the time. I really wish that we had passed a comprehensive immigration bill because that would’ve really helped our country. We came close, but we couldn’t.
America cannot do most of what needs to be done alone. You need friends. And we have good friends around the world. We have friends with whom we share values in Europe and Asia – thanks to the forward march of democracy – in Latin America, in Africa, and increasingly in the Middle East.
I’ve been an athlete all my life. I was a competitive figure skater, and then when I realized skating was not an adult sport I took up tennis and played that quite seriously from the time I was about 18.
I think that the United States has always been most effective when it is leading both from power and principle.
We’re in the middle of the transformation of a society that has handled its politics through repression to a society that will handle its politics through democratic institutions.
Iran can and should be a responsible state, not the leading state sponsor of terror.
Well, I didn’t feel that I could do justice to this story of my parents and their generation, and all that they did to make it possible for me to be who I am, if I sort of just put it at the beginning of a book about my last eight years in foreign policy.
Well, of course, all of the statistics say there are fewer eligible black men in my circle. But I’ve never thought of it that way. I believe that if the right person came into my life that would have been terrific.