When I was six, right before I started swimming, we went to a national competition here in Maryland and watched Michael Phelps swim, and I got to meet him afterwards, and I got his autograph. Fast forward nine years, and I'm at the Olympics with him,...
I think TARP was the most defining vote since I've been in Congress. It was wrong. You don't nationalize private - it was wrong. It desensitized people to what $700 billion was, which opened the door for a $900 million stimulus, for Obamacare, for al...
The turning point for me was when the Supreme Court installed Bush in 2000, even though he got half a million votes less nationally than Gore. It was nothing more than a bloodless coup and that's when I really started paying attention.
Human beings don’t necessarily exist inside of (or correspond to) the neat racial, gendered or national boxes into which we often unthinkingly place them. It’s a mistake to ask literature to reinforce such structures. Literature tends to crack th...
Once you win a National Championship, how do you do that again? How do you get the passion to do that again? We won it again right away, the next year. A lot of it had to do with the fact that I didn't give myself an opportunity to enjoy the first on...
Regardless of the difficulties we may face individually, in our families, in our communities and in our nation, the old adage is still true - you can make excuses or you can make progress, but you cannot make both! The America I know doesn't make exc...
The story of a man's soul, however trivial, can be more interesting and instructive than the story of a whole nation, especially if it is based on the self-analysis of a mature mind and is written with no vain desire to rouse our sympathy and curiosi...
I was in Boots buying contact lens solution, and my mobile went off. It was Jay-Z's partner at Roc Nation asking me what I was up to. He asked if I'd been to America, and I said, 'No.' Then he said, 'I'm putting you on a flight to New York tomorrow.'
Presidents are always also storytellers, purveyors of useful national mythologies. And surprisingly enough, Richard Nixon, this awkward man who didn't even really like people, had not been so bad at this duty - at least in the first four years of his...
I think that Mexican-American kids live in a global world. It's not even bi-, it's multi-. You know, for those of us who grew up with different countries on our block, different nationalities, you know, we moved into multiple worlds.
My costar James Lafferty, and his little brother Stuart Lafferty, and another buddy of ours, Ian Shive, are working on this project called 'Generation Wild.' It's about getting people to realize that being outdoors is not scary - you can go on advent...
If this is going to be a Christian nation that doesn't help the poor, either we have to pretend that Jesus was just as selfish as we are, or we've got to acknowledge that He commanded us to love the poor and serve the needy without condition and then...
I think England are probably not as streetwise as plenty of other teams. The other top teams know how to keep a victory or do certain things to hang on to leads or get back in games. They're a lot more streetwise than us. I think as a nation we are v...
People of different faiths, like yours and mine, sometimes wonder where we can meet in common purpose, when there are so many differences in creed and theology. Surely the answer is that we can meet in service, in shared moral convictions about our n...
I mean, Iceland is Iceland. It can't do damage to anybody unless you're Icelandic. But the United States can drag down the entire western economy. And I think what we are seeing is simply a reflection of reality. This is not, I'm sorry, but this is n...
I haven't been to Tasmania. I haven't been to the South Pole, and I haven't been to the North Pole. I want to see the polar bear migration before there are no polar bears. I want to see Glacier National Park before the glacier melts.
You deserve every mountain falling. You deserve every ocean reaching. You deserve all creation crying out your worth. You deserve all of Heaven singing. You deserve every nation rising, but I have heard that what You want most is my love.
The soles of Neil Armstrong's boots on the moon made permanent impressions on our souls and in our national psyche. Ann and I watched those steps together on her parent's sofa. Like all Americans we went to bed that night knowing we lived in the grea...
I grew up in war and saw the United Nations help my country to recover and rebuild. That experience was a big part of what led me to pursue a career in public service. As Secretary-General, I am determined to see this organization deliver tangible, m...
The 'looking forward' so prevalent in the late 1990s was bound to end once the new millennium began. Like some others of that era, I predicted a new focus on the moment, on real experience, and on what things are actually worth right now. Then 9/11 m...
Here's a nation, one of the founding pillars was freedom of speech and freedom of expression. And yet, we have imposed upon people restrictions on what they can say, on what they can think. And the media is the largest proponent of this, crucifying p...
