"If there is one principle more deeply..." - Quote by Thomas Jefferson

“War...is as much a punishment to the punisher as to the sufferer.”

“The lamp of war is kindled here, not to be extinguished but by torrents of blood.”

“An hereditary aristocracy... will change the form of our governments from the best to the worst in the world.”

“America is not the crude stereotype of a self-interested empire. The United States has been one of the greatest sources of progress that the world has ever known. We were born out of revolution against an empire. We were founded upon the ideal that all are created equal. And we have shed blood and struggled for centuries to give meaning to those words, within our borders and around the world. We are shaped by every culture. Drawn from every end of the Earth, and dedicated to a simple concept, E pluribus unum: Out of many, one.”

“It is that fundamental belief, it is that fundamental belief, I am my brother’s keeper, I am my sister’s keeper that makes this country work. It’s what allows us to pursue our individual dreams and yet still come together as one American family. E pluribus unum. Out of many, one.”

“[American Citizenship] captures the enduring idea that this country only works when we accept certain obligations to one another and to future generations”

“There is a little bit of that schoolyard attitude of, it's one thing for a guy your own size to mouth off to you, but if there's a little guy, you should just smack him around. And it's probably bad advice in the schoolyard. It's certainly not a good way to run a foreign policy because even when you are dealing with a non-peer, militarily, war is complicated.”

“For more than 60 years, the United States has stood by our allies and partners in the Asia Pacific. That includes our defence partnership with Singapore, which stretches back more than two decades.”

“I'll tell you what they're all going to face, whichever one of them becomes president on January 21st of 2009. They will face a military force - a United States military force that cannot sustain - continually sustain 140,000 people deployed in Iraq and the 20-odd or 25,000 people we have deployed in Afghanistan and our other deployments.”