We develop sentiments that we are only going to work with people like us. But you don't build up a nation by working with people like you. You overcome a history of conflict by reaching out to people very much unlike you.

President Truman made his name by looking into contracting. And that's how integrity within the military procurement started in the United States.

Organizations are accumulations of historical debris. They are not consciously thought. So when you ask the Education Ministry ‘What's your core function and who's your client?' they laugh at you. When I say that the client is the Afghan child - and the Ministry is an instrument, not the goal - it's greeted with shock. It's a new idea."

We must focus on our biggest enemy, poverty. There is no single-state solution to it, and that is a noble goal.

We need better options for securing the Internet. Instead of looking primarily for top-down government intervention, we can enlist the operators and users themselves.

Obama offers himself as a catalyst by which disenchanted Americans can overcome two decades of vicious partisanship, energize our democracy, and restore faith in government.

We need to understand that we as citizens and as a government in any community throughout this country have no more important obligation than to educate those who are going to replace us.

I was losing interest in politics, when the repeal of the Missouri Compromise aroused me again. What I have done since then is pretty well known.