“My strong preference has always been to legislate when I can get legislation done.”

“Operation Iraqi Freedom is over, and the Iraqi people now have lead responsibility for the security of their country”

“Let's remember that our leadership is defined not just by our defence against threats, but by the enormous opportunities to do good and promote understanding.”

“When people are oppressed, and human rights are denied - particularly along sectarian lines or ethnic lines - when dissent is silenced, it feeds violent extremism, it creates an environment that is ripe for terrorists to exploit. When peaceful, democratic change is impossible, it feeds into the terrorist propaganda that violence is the only answer available.”

“I look at some of the kids that I interact with, and they were born with so many disadvantages. And you could start off in your first interaction with them saying, "Unless they get a lot of compensatory help, they're not going to be able to compete; they're just so far behind, and they're wounded and they're hurt."”

“I would with such perfection govern, sir,T'excel the golden age.”

“What's more to do,Which would be planted newly with the time,As calling home our exiled friends abroadThat fled the snares of watchful tyranny,Producing forth the cruel ministersOf this dead butcher and his fiend-like queen,Who, as 'tis thought, by self and violent handsTook off her life; this, and what needful elseThat calls upon us, by the grace of GraceWe will perform in measure, time, and place.”

“The goof man, in dealing with his people, taxes them with luxury.”

“The presidential office is not a rosewater affair. This is an office in which a man must put on his war paint.”

“His [the President's] office is anything he has the sagacity and force to make it.”

“Let him [the President] once win the admiration and confidence of the country, and no other single force can withstand him, no combination of forces will easily overpower him.... If he rightly interpret the national thought and boldly insist upon it, he is irresistible; and the country never feels the zest of action so much as when the President is of such insight and caliber.”

“[The purpose of a written constitution is] to bind up the several branches of government by certain laws, which, when they transgress, their acts shall become nullities; to render unnecessary an appeal to the people, or in other words a rebellion, on every infraction of their rights, on the peril that their acquiescence shall be construed into an intention to surrender those rights.”

“We enjoy freedom and the rule of law on which it depends, not because we deserve it, but because others before us put their lives on the line to defend it.”

“No man is above the law, and no man is below it.”

“Men are like Geneva watches with crystal faces, which expose the whole movement.”

“It is vain to keep a secret from one who has a right to know it. It will tell itself.”

“No one who has read official documents needs to be told how easy it is to conceal the essential truth under the apparently candid and all- disclosing phrases of a voluminous and particularizing report.”