My friendships and relationships in the conservative world are not predicated on political correctness and enforced conformity of thought. They are based instead on mutual respect honesty and understanding - concepts many modern liberals should consider revisiting.

For this reason the expansion of relations with all countries is on the agenda of the Islamic Republic of Iran. I mean balanced relationships based on mutual respect and observation of each other's rights.

I have a certain pool of subject matter that I like to write about things that interest me: politics religion ecology and relationships between men and women. And that's usually what I focus on.

The American way was for commerce personal relationships and religion to be voluntary. No one was forced to participate in something he didn't want.

Religion creates community community creates altruism and altruism turns us away from self and towards the common good... There is something about the tenor of relationships within a religious community that makes it the best tutorial in citizenship and good neighborliness.

The day is not far off when the economic problem will take the back seat where it belongs and the arena of the heart and the head will be occupied or reoccupied by our real problems - the problems of life and of human relations of creation and behavior and religion.

I feel an intense intimacy with those who have this loathing interest in me. Further than this I know what they mean I sympathize with them I understand them. There should be a name (as poetic as love) for this relationship between loather and loathed it is of the closest and more full of passion than incest.

We saw what happened in Jimmy Carter's administration. President Carter was a good man with the best of intentions. But he came to Washington without a good working relationship with Democratic members of Congress which played a big part in his administration's problems.

My relationship with the journalists who covered the campaign was complicated. I often hid from the critical eye of their cameras and their omnipresent digital recorders wary of the critique implicit in every captured moment. But I also grew to respect and understand their passion for their work their love for the journey we were sharing.

The relationship between press and politician - protected by the Constitution and designed to be happily adversarial - becomes sour raw and confrontational.