This is a moment that I deeply wish my parents could have lived to share. My father would have enjoyed what you have so generously said of me-and my mother would have believed it.

You do not examine legislation in the light of the benefits it will convey if properly administered, but in the light of the wrongs it would do and the harms it would cause if improperly administered.

When the burdens of the presidency seem unusually heavy, I always remind myself it could be worse. I could be a mayor.

You aren't learning anything when you're talking.

If one morning I walked on top of the water across the Potomac River, the headline that afternoon would read: 'President Can't Swim.'

My mother was a great believer in reincarnation — she believed she and my father had been married many times before. She always said 'Next time, I'll be the artist and he'll do the rest.