So you see, the quality of humor is not a personal or a national monopoly. It's as free as salvation, and, I am afraid, far more widely distributed. But it has its value, I think. The hard and sordid things of life are too hard and too sordid and too cruel for us to know and touch them year after year without some mitigating influence, some kindly veil to draw over them, from time to time, to blur the craggy outlines, and make the thorns less sharp and the cruelties less malignant.
That's a chapter - the last chapter - of the 20th ... 20th ... the 21st century that most of us would rather forget. The last chapter of the 20th century. This is the first chapter of the 21st century.
We come before God to pray for the missing and the dead, and for those who loved them... Our purpose as a nation is firm, yet our wounds as a people are recent and unhealed and lead us to pray... This world he created is of moral design. Grief and tragedy and hatred are only for a time. Goodness, remembrance, and love have no end, and the Lord of life holds all who die and all who mourn... Neither death nor life nor angels nor principalities, nor powers nor things present nor things to come nor height nor depth can separate us from God's love.
I don't think I'll ever meet the perfect woman. I might have to get me one of them mail order women. You can do that: you send away to the Philippines, and they send you a wife. The only thing is, once you're on their mailing list, they keep sending you a relative a month whether you want it or not.
God told me to strike at al Qaeda and I struck them, and then he instructed me to strike at Saddam [Hussein], which I did, and now I am determined to solve the problem in the Middle East. If you help me I will act, and if not, the elections will come and I will have to focus on them.
It is time to set aside the old partisan bickering and finger-pointing and name-calling that comes from freeing parents to make different choices for their children.
To date, we've arrested or otherwise dealt with many key commanders of al Qaeda... All told, more than 3,000 suspected terrorists have been arrested in many countries. Many others have met a different fate. Let's put it this way - they are no longer a problem to the United States and our friends and allies.
It has sustained me in moments of success and in moments of disappointment. Without it, I'd be a different person. And without it, I doubt I'd be here today.