We know that segregation is evil. We know that the sickest children should not go to the worst hospitals.
Both the Bush people and [Barack] Obama people had no problem working with the holdovers. They weren`t out to get them.
Nothing can be taken for granted and this great achievement is now under assault by Russia. But what we did in my time is no less honorable. It is for the present generation to defend.
No great power is ever satisfied with its sphere of influence. They never are.
I think the West is in a low point we haven`t seen since the 1930s.
I think that President George W. Bush was ahead of most of his government, in realizing that Putin was not the person we thought he was.
The same people the Americans sent over - that we sent over to advise the Russians, we also sent over to advise the Poles about how to build a post-communist economy. Same people, same advice, with radically different results, which leads to suspicion it's not our advice which was the crucial variable. It was the Poles, on one hand, and the Russians on the other. The Poles succeeded; the Russians didn't. Don't blame us.
I don't believe in God, but I have this idea that if there were a God, or destiny of some kind looking down on us, that if he saw you taking anything for granted he'd take it away.
On a summer night it can be lovely to sit around outside with friends after dinner and, yes, read poetry to each other. Keats and Yeats will never let you down, but it's differently exciting to read the work of poets who are still walking around out there.
The hardest challenge is to be yourself in a world where everyone is trying to make you be somebody else.
Parents are heroes already - all they have to do is start acting like it.