The great thing about being a print journalist is that you are permitted to duck. Cameramen get killed while the writers are flat on the floor. A war correspondent for the BBC dedicated his memoir to 50 fallen colleagues and I guarantee you they were all taking pictures. I am only alive because I am such a chicken.

I have great people smart people that are around me and we love the challenge. I guess it's like climbing a mountain or building a building. It's a challenge but you love every challenge that it brings or presents itself.

As the economy faces such difficulties more tough questions need to be asked about what the Tories would do if elected. Their ideology of free markets and small government needs challenging. That has to be part of our job.

Power must be used but it must be tempered by soul-searching and the recognition of our human capacity for error. That is the maxim that should inform our approach to every challenge from reforming state government to engaging in foreign affairs.

In government you carry each hope each disillusion. And in politics it's always about the next challenge.

The United States is at a critical juncture in time. Our government is riddled with historic debt and the limited resources of philanthropic and non-profit efforts cannot meet the scale of social challenges we face with necessary force.

I've got the greatest job in the world. There's no other job in government where cause and effect is so tightly coupled where you can make a difference every day in so many different ways and in so many different people's lives. It's a great challenge.

When man lives under government he is fallen his worth is gone and his nature tarnished.

I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial by strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country.

I grow plants for many reasons: to please my eye or to please my soul to challenge the elements or to challenge my patience for novelty or for nostalgia but mostly for the joy in seeing them grow.