Tourism is a crucial industry that could employ millions of Filipinos, skilled and unskilled alike, cross those 7,107 islands of the Philippines. From the current projection of 3.3 million tourist arrivals in 2010, our aim is to eventually attract 6 million tourists. In the process, we expect to create 3 million jobs in the next six years.

Anytime emotions are involved, you cannot come up with an impartial and objective assessment of any given problem.

I didn't have any ambition to be president. It was fate. The people found me.

My father offered his life so our democracy could live. My mother devoted her life to nurturing that democracy. I will dedicate my life to making our democracy reach its fullest potential: that of ensuring equality for all. My family has sacrificed much, and I am willing to do this again if necessary.

My grandfather was born in 1920. His grandfather was born in 1860, at the beginning of the Civil War, into an America where slavery had yet to be abolished. And so, as I have sometimes thought about it, I dodged slavery by just five generations.

War stories deal in death. War illuminates love, while love is the greatest expression of hope, without which any story rings untrue to life. And to deny hope in a story about such darkness is to create false art.

The Constitution is designed to inconvenience one person from taking us to war. War is a very solemn and sobering and extraordinary act, and it should not be granted to one person.

Just as people have long believed that strengthening ties of trade improves the prospects for peace and the free exchange of ideas, Facebook friendships or Twitter followings already transcend national borders.