I must dissent emphatically from any proposal to spend any money on preparing a statue of me, more especially at a time when people do not have enough food and clothing.
We are a people united by our love for freedom, even when we differ in our personal beliefs. In America, we are free to profess any faith we choose, or no faith at all.
The two Testaments are interesting, each in its own way. The Old one gives us a picture of these people's Deity as he was before he got religion, the other one gives us a picture of him as he appeared afterward.
Definition of victory which is really an important thing for the American people to understand is that we have an ally in the war on terror, that democracy is able to sustain itself and defend itself, and the Iraqi people feel that the security forces that we've trained up are capable of defending themselves against the violent.
If people, whether they are conservative or liberal, left or right, are unwilling to compromise and engage in the democratic process, and are taking absolutist views, and demonizing opponents, then democracy will break down.
A lot of the reason why the debate is acrimonious is because of the 24/7 news cycles, blogs, and people being able to just throw something out there in order to get attention. And I'm not going be out there doing the same thing, trying to trash my successor or call attention to myself. I hope that's a positive contribution to the dialogue.
We suffer from a hallucination, from a false and distorted sensation of our own existence as living organisms. Most of us have the sensation that "I myself" is a seperate center of feeling and action, living inside and bounded by the physical body-a center which "confronts" an "external" world of people and things, making contact through the senses with a universe both alien and strange.
Building on our Young South-east Asian Leaders Initiative, I'm hopeful that we can continue expand the ties and cooperation between our young people and students.