I don't want my generals or my defense secretary or my national-security team to ever feel deploying weapons to kill people as routine or abstract, even if the targets are bad people.
People who, out of an inborn moderation, leave every glass standing only half-emptied refuse to admit that everything in the world has its sediments and dregs.
In the highest antiquity, the people did not know that there were rulers. In the next age they loved them and praised them. In the next they feared them; in the next they despised them.
It is always painful fo part from people whom one has known for a very brief space of time. The absence of old friends one can endure with equanimity. But even a momentary separation from anyone to whom one has just been introduced is almost unbearable.
What ends up happening is people form images and the image they form is, in some ways, what they want it to be. The idea of trying to correct the image is something I'm not interested in doing.
What the American people understand is that I look at what we need to get done to keep the American people safe and to move our interests forward, and I make those decisions.
No matter how corrupt and unjust a convict may be, he loves fairness more than anything else. If the people placed over him are unfair, from year to year he lapses into an embittered state characterized by an extreme lack of faith.
I don't want people confusing what it is that I'm about. I just stand there and sing. And I don't do stunts or anything. if I wanted to do all that, I don't think I'd get away with it.
When we are young and again when we are old, we depend heavily on the affection of others. Between these stages we usually feel that we can do everything without help from others and that other people's affection is simply not important. But at this stage I think it is very important to keep deep human affection.
America is the largest investor in the technologies necessary to be able to say to people, 'You can grow your economy so people's standard of living can improve, and at the same time be good stewards of the environment'.
I call on people to be 'obsessed citizens,' forever questioning and asking for accountability. That's the only chance we have today of a healthy and happy life.