“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."”

“It now appears that the negro race is, more than any other, susceptible of rapid civilization. The emancipation is observed, in the islands, to have wrought for the negro a benefit as sudden as when a thermometer is brought out of the shade into the sun. It has given him eyes and ears.”

“The civility of no race can be perfect whilst another race is degraded.”

“Black men built the railroads, not blue eyes.”

“Bounty, being free itself, thinks all others so.”

“He that is robbed, not wanting what is stolen, him not know t, and he's not robbed at all.”

“'Tis better to be vile than vile esteemed, When not to be, receives reproach of being, And the just pleasure lost, which is so deemed, Not by our feeling, but by others' seeing.”

“Those that are good manners at the court are as ridiculous in the country, as the behavior of the country is most mockable at the court.”

“I have very poor and unhappy brains for drinking: I could well wish courtesy would invent some other custom of entertainment.”

“There is nothing settled in manners, but the laws of behavior yield to the energy of the individual.”