If somebody is saying that I should not compete because I'm a man, I don't know what to say to that. And if somebody is saying that I had it easy, I would invite them to join the military and enter Indiana politics in 2010 as a gay person. See how easy they find it.

We can't look for greatness in the past.

Greatness will come by looking forward - untethered from the politics of the past and anchored by our shared values - and by changing our nation's future.

A Midwestern municipal government isn't the first thing that leaps to mind when you think of innovation, but it ought to be.

You can't come away with this cosmic perspective thinking that you are better than others and want to fight. That's why you'll never have astrophysicists leading nations into war.

When you boil war down or all conflict down to two people, it's a great advert for humanity sometimes. People can find connections with each other, regardless of the bigger picture.

The most shocking fact about war is that its victims and its instruments are individual human beings, and that these individual beings are condemned by the monstrous conventions of politics to murder or be murdered in quarrels not their own.

God and the politicians willing, the United States can declare peace upon the world, and win it.