We have no more fundamental obligation in government than to ensure the safety of our citizens.

We discussed politics, but we also talked about the importance of hard work, personal responsibility, living within your means, keeping your word. Those lessons stay with you throughout your life.

Some of the most important conversations I've ever had occurred at my family's dinner table.

Politics is a contest among people of diverse backgrounds and philosophies, advocating different solutions to common problems. The system only works when principled, energetic people participate.

I don't know what leadership is. You can't touch it. You can't feel it. It's not tangible. But I do know this: you recognize it when you see it.

It's appropriate to celebrate public service, and the thoughtful people who choose to serve. They symbolize what is good and decent about this historic citizen legislature, and we thank them.

Leadership is about doing what you know is right - even when a growing din of voices around you is trying to convince you to accept what you know to be wrong.

I support stem cell research, including embryonic stem cell research.

Serving in Congress has been the honor of a lifetime.

Thoughtful people of different political philosophies can disagree, but in a very agreeable manner.

I generally believe in polls. Scientific polls are accurate.

Even the faded flower denies nothingness.

A man does not die of love or his liver or even of old age he dies of being a man.

Learning should be a joy and full of excitement. It is life's greatest adventure it is an illustrated excursion into the minds of the noble and the learned.

I think I started learning lessons about being a good person long before I ever knew what basketball was. And that starts in the home, it starts with the parental influence.

When you don't want to be where you are, you create suffering for yourself. Change happens through acceptance, kindness and relaxation--not resistance, not warfare, not fights.

I worked for a publishing company in Hollywood.

If you say "I'm going to be an actor, but I'll get a teaching degree just in case," when things get hard, you'll just be a teacher and that's how you get stuck.

All faith is false, all faith is true. Truth is the shattered mirror strown in myriad bits, while each believes his little bit the whole to own.

I have a tremendous respect for writers who scribble away their torments, and their passions into plays.

My concentration was really on getting to university and becoming a doctor. My parents let me know that school marks were important. Achievement was something which came by hard work.