No matter what message you are about to deliver somewhere whether it is holding out a hand of friendship or making clear that you disapprove of something is the fact that the person sitting across the table is a human being so the goal is to always establish common ground.

People come in and out of our lives and the true test of friendship is whether you can pick back up right where you left off the last time you saw each other.

The arc of American history almost inevitably moves toward freedom. Whether it's Lincoln and the Emancipation Proclamation the expansion of women's rights or now gay rights I think there is an almost-inevitable march toward greater civil liberties.

Freedom is an indivisible word. If we want to enjoy it and fight for it we must be prepared to extend it to everyone whether they are rich or poor whether they agree with us or not no matter what their race or the color of their skin.

I have no choice about whether or not I have Parkinson's. I have nothing but choices about how I react to it. In those choices there's freedom to do a lot of things in areas that I wouldn't have otherwise found myself in.

Religious freedom opens a door for Americans that is closed to too many others around the world. But whether we walk through that door and what we do with our lives after we do is up to us.

Religious liberty is the first freedom in our Constitution. And whether the cause is justice for the persecuted compassion for the needy and the sick or mercy for the child waiting to be born there is no greater force for good in the nation than Christian conscience in action.

One important theme is the extent to which one can ever correct an error especially outside any frame of religious forgiveness. All of us have done something we regret - how we manage to remove that from our conscience or whether that's even possible interested me.

On a level of simple personal survival understanding and forgiveness are crucial... whether in an intimate personal relationship or on a global level.

Bahrainis are better off than many other Arabs. We have a welfare state everybody gets a salary whether they have a job or not. Electricity and food are subsidized school and healthcare are free. And we don't differentiate between Bahrainis and foreigners. We are very proud of that.