If you join government, calmly make your contribution and move on. Don't go along to get along; do your best and when you have to -- and you will -- leave, and be something else.

The president - every president - works for us. We don't work for him. We sometimes lose track of this, or rather get the balance wrong. Respect is due and must be palpable, but now and then you have to press, to either force them to be forthcoming or force them to reveal that they won't be.

Cynicism is not realistic and tough. It's unrealistic and kind of cowardly because it means you don't have to try.

We must try again to be alive to what the people of our country really long for in our national life: forgiveness and grace, maturity and wisdom.

...Our political leaders will know our priorities only if we tell them, again and again, and if those priorities begin to show up in the polls.

I love eulogies. They are the most moving kind of speech because they attempt to pluck meaning from the fog, and on short order, when the emotions are still ragged and raw and susceptible to leaps.

You don't have to be old in America to say of a world you lived in: That world is gone.