This war has been motivated by pride or arrogance, by a desire to control oil wealth, by a desire to implant our programs. (talking about the Iraq war)

The measure of a society is found in how they treat their weakest and most helpless citizens.

What are the things that you can't see that are important? I would say justice, truth, humility, service, compassion, love...They're the guiding lights of a life.

America did not invent human rights. In a very real sense human rights invented America.

We cannot be both the world's leading champion of peace and the world's leading supplier of the weapons of war.

All I want is the same thing you want. To have a nation with a government that is as good and honest and decent and competent and compassionate and as filled with love as are the American people.

We become not a melting pot but a beautiful mosaic. Different people, different beliefs, different yearnings, different hopes, different dreams.

The test of a government is not how popular it is with the powerful and privileged few but how honestly and fairly it deals with the many who must depend on it.

America has no functioning democracy at this moment.

If you fear making anyone mad, then you ultimately probe for the lowest common denominator of human achievement.

It is difficult for the common good to prevail against the intense concentration of those who have a special interest, especially if the decisions are made behind locked doors.

To be happy, make others happy.

A lie is the most sacred private property on Earth. Governments claim it is not theirs, and that their critics are the rightful owners.

Not to discover the love of God is to be lost in life

You'll never be as good as the next page you write, or as bad as the last one.

Money is not the reason that people enter teaching.

But when you get to know a character so well, you start to have insights that you can't show because you're confined to your script of your hit show.

I didn't want to just write a series - I wanted to write an epic, on story that spans three books, where decisions made in the first impact the last.

I have a life. My kids don't run my house.

The Utopians feel that slaughtering our fellow creatures gradually destroys the sense of compassion, which is the finest sentiment of which our human nature is capable.

I don't want to be an editor - I want to be really forward about that. I would be a horrible editor.