Any issue, including political, economic and religious activities human beings pursue in this world, should be fully understood before we pass our judgement. Therefore, it is very important to know the causes. Whatever the issue, we should be able to see the complete picture. This will enable us to comprehend the whole story.
Any politician who respects China's government should tell it openly what is in his heart. It is disrespectful to keep quiet about such issues - both vis-a-vis the government and the people concerned.
One of the gratifying things, I think, about the end of my presidency even though admittedly my successor ran against a lot of what we stood for, is when you look at the individual issues and the progress that we've made on a lot of those issues, we got the support of a pretty decent majority.
When it comes to immigration, I have actually put more money, under my administration, into border security than any other administration previously. We've got more security resources at the border - more National Guard, more border guards, you name it - than the previous administration. So we've ramped up significantly the issue of border security.
Simply that we are mirroring the trends in society, at any given time smuggling was an issue in the seventies, corruption is an issue today, and we faithfully reflect those issues.
I have one other issue I'd like to throw on the table. I hesitate to do it, but let me tell you some of the issues that are involved here. If we are dealing with psychology, then the thermometers one uses to measure it have an effect. I was raising the question on the side with Governor Mullins of what would happen if the Treasury sold a little gold in this market. There's an interesting question here because if the gold price broke in that context, the thermometer would not be just a measuring tool. It would basically affect the underlying psychology.
Part of what attracted me to the village was it had a lot of parallels to contemporary issues. Like, fear and the way fear controls us. How the governing body of a town, or a nation, controls us through fear. They might mean well by it, but we are conditioned to be afraid of things. Fear of the unknown. Fear of terrorism. And it's unfortunate.
It's the reason why I am always interested in engaging in people who are pushing us and pushing against the status quo. But having been an activist, the only thing that I'm always encouraging activists to do is, once you have raised the issue, and even through controversial means, you have to come behind it with an agenda and the possibility of reconciliation if power meets your demands.
From eating meat arrogance is born, from arrogance erroneous imaginations issue, and from imagination is born greed; and for this reason refrain from eating meat.
I'm not going to Wall Street [after the presidency]. The amount of time that I'll be investing in issues is going to be high. But it'll be necessarily in a different capacity.
One of the great qualities of Chancellor Merkel is that she is steady. She analyzes a situation. She's honest. Sometimes we've had disagreements, but when we do, it's very constructive. And we are consistently open with each other about how we should approach these issues.