What is most troubling about Mr. Putin's aggression in Crimea is that it reflects a growing disregard for America's credibility in the world. That has emboldened other aggressive actors - from Chinese nationalists to Al Qaeda terrorists and Iranian theocrats.

The core political values of our free society are so deeply embedded in our collective consciousness that only a few malcontents, lunatics generally, ever dare to threaten them.

Our great power does not mean we can do whatever we want whenever we want, nor should we assume we have all the wisdom and knowledge necessary to succeed.

If you want to preserve - I'm very serious now - if you want to preserve democracy as we know it, you have to have a free and many times adversarial press. And without it, I am afraid that we would lose so much of our individual liberties over time. That's how dictators get started.

Giap was a master of logistics, but his reputation rests on more than that. His victories were achieved by a patient strategy that he and Ho Chi Minh were convinced would succeed - an unwavering resolve to suffer immense casualties and the near total destruction of their country to defeat any adversary, no matter how powerful.

In 1987, I had my first opportunity to provide 'advice and consent' on a Supreme Court nominee. At that time, I stated that the qualifications essential for evaluating a nominee for the bench included 'integrity, character, legal competence and ability, experience, and philosophy and judicial temperament.' On that test, Elena Kagan fails.

Civic participation over a lifetime, working in neighborhoods and communities and service of all kinds - military and civilian, full-time and part-time, national and international - will strengthen America's civic purpose.

Do not yield. Do not flinch. Stand up. Stand up with our President and fight. We're Americans. We're Americans, and we'll never surrender. They will.

America's greatest strength has always been its hopeful vision of human progress.

When a president makes life and death decisions, he should draw strength and wisdom from broad and deep experience with the reasons for and the risks of committing our children to our defense. For no matter how many others are involved in the decision, the president is a lonely man in a dark room when the casualty reports come in.

Saddam Hussein is a risk-taking aggressor who has attacked four countries, used chemical weapons against his own people, professed a desire to harm the United States and its allies, and, even faced with the prospect of his regime's imminent destruction, has still refused to abide by Security Council demands that he disarm.

I believe in evolution. But I also believe, when I hike the Grand Canyon and see it at sunset, that the hand of God is there also.

Our political differences, no matter how sharply they are debated, are really quite narrow in comparison to the remarkably durable national consensus on our founding convictions.

Every day, people serve their neighbors and our nation in many different ways, from helping a child learn and easing the loneliness of those without a family to defending our freedom overseas. It is in this spirit of dedication to others and to our country that I believe service should be broadly and deeply encouraged.

As far as this business of solitary confinement goes, the most important thing for survival is communication with someone, even if it's only a wave or a wink, a tap on the wall, or to have a guy put his thumb up. It makes all the difference.

In the real world, as lived and experienced by real people, the demand for human rights and dignity, the longing for liberty and justice and opportunity, the hatred of oppression and corruption and cruelty is reality.

My record shows that I have put my country first, and I follow the philosophy and traditions of Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan.

When you're not winning, you're losing.

On the subject of Osama bin Laden... we will track him down. We will capture him. We will bring him to justice, and I will follow him to the gates of hell.

The truth is sometimes a hard pill to swallow. It sometimes causes us difficulties at home and abroad. It is sometimes used by our enemies in attempts to hurt us. But the American people are entitled to it, nonetheless.

Our shared values define us more than our differences. And acknowledging those shared values can see us through our challenges today if we have the wisdom to trust in them again.

I would argue that's because we had a bunch of smart people running around here. They were coming in and working very hard and many of them had left jobs in which they made significantly more money.

As a businessman, I learned something that Donald Trump never figured out: It isn't about how many times you yell, 'You're fired,' but instead, how many times you say, 'You're hired.'

We need to recognize that we can't allow people that are aberrations of nature to take away the joys and freedoms that we enjoy.