It seemed romantic but also tragic - people would be winning but then lose it all or crash but fight on break bones but get back on their bikes and try to finish. Just getting to the end was seen as an achievement in itself.

With respect to the respective French and German traditions you are no doubt correct although I am reluctant to see individual achievement reduced to archetypes.

I want to say with the utmost of sincerity not as a Republican but as an American that I have great respect for Senator Obama's historic achievement to become his party's nominee not because of his color but with indifference to it.

Contentment does not come from achievement. It comes from a relationship with the Lord.

We want to obviously foster a relationship that we're a partner with states that we all share the same goals of closing the achievement gap just as the Congress does and that we're practical and sophisticated enough to understand what they're talking about.

The worth of a civilization or a culture is not valued in the terms of its material wealth or military power but by the quality and achievements of its representative individuals - its philosophers its poets and its artists.

For the liberal state to accommodate a diversity of beliefs while having few positive convictions is one of the more admirable achievements of civilization.

The Nobel Peace Prize is a powerful message. A durable peace is not a single achievement but an environment a process and a commitment.

And I have lived since - as you have - in a period of cold war during which we have ensured by our achievements in the science and technology of destruction that a third act in this tragedy of war will result in the peace of extinction.

Peace is not the product of a victory or a command. It has no finishing line no final deadline no fixed definition of achievement. Peace is a never-ending process the work of many decisions.