"Obama won the presidency on the strength of his message and the skills of the messenger. Now the talk of hope and change feels out of tune when so many Americans are out of work, over-mortgaged, and worried that life will be even tougher for their children."

"For a man who has compared himself to Theodore Roosevelt and the nation's challenges to those of the Gilded Age, Obama put forward a tepid agenda."

"One side of the American psyche wants smaller government, lower taxes, and more choices for individuals, even if those choices increase risk. The other wants a strong social safety net to protect the weakest among us, even if it costs more to minimize risk."

"White House operatives went to great lengths to show Obama shifting focus from wars abroad to domestic issues at home."

"We often have to put up with most from those on whom we most depend."

"I want the French people to respect values that allow each individual to practice his or her faith, but in the frame of our common rules of secularism."

"Never trust anything that can think for itself if you can't see where it keeps its brain."

"Whatever universe a professor believes in must at any rate be a universe that lends itself to lengthy discourse. A universe definable in two sentences is something for which the professorial intellect has no use. No faith in anything of that cheap kind!"