The job of an elected president is to overcome the past and change the playing field.

We live in an interconnected world, and you cannot prevent people from leaving. What you need to do is to create opportunities. At the same time, people are also coming back.

Do not ever threaten an Afghan with violence. We will rise as one and we will face every threat the way we have taken on thousands of previous armies and conquerors.

When windows shatter through a bomb, we will repair it next week because we are Afghans. That's the spirit.

We could form a government of national unity fighting corruption. The ordinary Afghan is sick and tired of it, because it's she or he that pays the price.

Peace is a national issue, not only government's responsibility.

We will not let the price of peace be greater than the price of war, we will firmly safeguard the achievements of the past 13 years under former President Karzai.

It [terrorism] happened because intelligence, leadership and police failures made it possible.

The most significant thing is public participation. That assures the Afghan public that our promises are not empty.

Deadlines concentrate the mind. But deadlines should not be dogmas.

Terrorism attacks peoples' trust in the system of their state. There is protection, but only if there is collective action and collective understanding about how to really deal with this phenomenon.

The state of no being knows neither pleasure nor pain.

There is no disappointment we endure one-half so great as what we are to ourselves.

Wormholes don't exist because the only way they would exist is if they were seeded with exotic material created by an intelligence far beyond our own. Something would have to make one.

It seems to me, that if statesmen had a little more arithmetic, or were accustomed to calculation, wars would be much less frequent.

...physics is the study of the structure of consciousness.

There's biology in everything, even when you're feeling spiritual.

The likely economic effects [of the war in Iraq] would be relatively small... Under every plausible scenario, the negative effect will be quite small relative to the economic benefits.

Cooking is an art, but you eat it too.

A computer is a machine for constructing mappings from input to output.

Hitler spoke in a quiet, soft voice.