A responsible warrior is not someone who takes the weight of the world on his shoulders, but someone who has learned to deal with the challenges of the moment.
For we have always understood that when times change, so must we, that fidelity to our founding principles requires new responses to new challenges, that preserving our individual freedoms ultimately requires collective action.
We too often let the material things serve as indicators that we're doing well, even though something inside us tells us that were not doing our best. That we are avoiding that which is hard, but also necessary. That we are shrinking from rather than rising to the challenges of the age.
We will build our defenses beyond challenge, lest weakness invite challenge. We will confront weapons of mass destruction, so that a new century is spared new horrors.
It seems, in fact, that the more advanced a society is, the greater will be its interest in ruined things, for it will see in them a redemptively sobering reminder of the fragility of its own achievements. Ruins pose a direct challenge to our concern with power and rank, with bustle and fame. They puncture the inflated folly of our exhaustive and frenetic pursuit of wealth.
Whenever I look at the history of presidents I deeply admire - the one thing that I'm always struck by is persistence. It's a quality that's underrated. Being able to plough through, being able to stay buoyant in the face of challenges.
One of the things I learned as president is that your life is just not going to unfold the way you want it to. There will be surprises, challenges, and therefore the question is how you deal with the unexpected.
We'll continue to speak out in a respectful way; never challenging somebody's love for America when you criticize their strategies or their point of view.