I believe in the acceptance of personal responsibility, freedom of choice, and the British Empire, which took freedom and the rule of law to countries which would never have known it otherwise.
When I was 11 years old and I was on a road trip with my family. I turned to my dad and said, "Do you believe in Adam and Eve?" And he said he didn't think so. I remember that felt like a slap in the face, because if my parents questioned Adam and Eve, then they potentially questioned everything within Catholicism. Eventually that idea led to my feeling liberated, but at that time it was very scary.
We admit of no government by divine right, believing that so far as power is concerned the Beneficent Creator has made no distinction amongst men; that all are upon an equality, and that the only legitimate right to govern is an express grant of power from the governed.
They've seen me make decisions, they've seen me under trying times, they've seen me weep, they've seen me laugh, they've seen me hug. And they know who I am, and I believe they're comfortable with the fact that they know I'm not going to shift principles or shift positions based upon polls and focus groups.
Reason forbade me many things which,
Instinctively, my nature was attracted to;
And a perpetual loss I feel if, knowing,
I believe a falsehood or deny the truth.
I believe we should continue to have a partnership of national states each retaining the right to protect its vital interests, but developing more effectively than at present the habit of working together.
I can hardly believe that the South and North can live in peace, unless we can get rid of the negroes ... I believe that it would be better to export them all to some fertile country with a good climate, which they could have to themselves.
to design means forcing ourselves to unlearn what we believe we already know, patiently to take apart the mechanisms behind our reflexes and to acknowledge the mystery and stupefying complexity of everyday gestures like switching off a light of turning on a tap
I actually believe that some residue of discrimination would lessen, because it's my view that there is a certain percentage of the white population that stereotypes and makes assumptions about African Americans because they don't inject the history of slavery and Jim Crow into current incarceration rates, or crime rates, or poverty rates, or what have you.
In spite of conflicting signals - and in spite of a popular culture that sometimes puts down their innocence - most of our kids are good kids. Large numbers do volunteer work. Nearly all believe in God, and most practice their faith. Teen pregnancy and violence are actually going down. Across America, under a program called True Love Waits, nearly a million teens have pledged themselves to abstain from sex until marriage.
But we believed if we kept on working, if we kept on marching, if we kept on voting, if we kept on believing, we would make America beautiful for everybody.
I believe I don't know what the future holds, but I know who holds the future. I know who and what holds the future. I trust that beyond this space and time, all is well, and all will be well.
I believe we can seize this future together, because we are not as divided as our politics suggests. [...] We are greater than the sum of our individual ambitions. [...] We are and forever will be the United States of America. [...] We will continue our journey forward and remind the world just why it is that we live in the greatest nation on Earth.
I believe in human liberty as I believe in the wine of life. There is no salvation for men in the pitiful condescension of industrial masters. Guardians have no place in a land of freemen.