Small opportunities are often the beginning of great enterprises.

Great talents are the most lovely and often the most dangerous fruits on the tree of humanity. They hang upon the most slender twigs that are easily snapped off.

One of the most difficult speeches to prepare is an address to a graduation class which is why I don't often do them.

I have no problems with private schools. I graduated from one and so did my mother. Private schools are useful and we often use public funds to pay for their infrastructures and other common needs.

A reporter's ability to keep the bond of confidentiality often enables him to learn the hidden or secret aspects of government.

Common sense tells us that the government's attempts to solve large problems more often create new ones. Common sense also tells us that a top-down one-size-fits-all plan will not improve the workings of a nationwide health-care system that accounts for one-sixth of our economy.

All too often government's response to social breakdown has been a classic case of 'patching' - a case of handing money out containing problems and limiting the damage but in doing so supporting - even reinforcing - dysfunctional behaviour.

The fact is that America has been at her most prosperous when government and the private sector have been not at war but in a wary if often underplayed alliance. History is unmistakable on this point.

Too often government responds to the whispers of lobbyists before the cries of the people.

It is through states that the American people get the job done every day often in spite of a deeply flawed bureaucratic federal government.