The spirit is at home, if not entirely satisfied, in America.

Science is so incremental and so full of setbacks and small steps forward. In order to really thrive in this business, you have to be able to glean as much joy from the failure days and from the small increments as you do from the breakthroughs.

One cannot rule out a blizzard in Minnesota after Labor Day, and so when I travel for Thanksgiving or any time in the fall, I am careful to fly into Des Moines instead of Minneapolis and then drive the 200 miles north to my hometown.

There is a fundamental and culturally learned power imbalance between men and women, and it follows us into the workplace. The violence born of this imbalance follows us also. We would like to believe that it stops short of following us into the laboratory and into the field - but it does not.

Your bones are not just made of the last meal you had, but the meals that you've had across many years. By looking at the composition of those teeth, researchers can say that something was a large component of the diet. This tells us a lot about how hominins lived and what they ate.

As an environmental scientist, I think our first need is to feed and shelter and nurture. That has always required the exploitation of plant life, and it always will.

I think it's very common that scientists or technical people have an artistic side. Sometimes they are very accomplished musicians. Sometimes they have very fine tastes according to art or design. And often, they've spent a big chunk of their childhood or they're growing-up years trying to get in very good at those activities.

The lessons I learned from my mother and her friends have guided me through death, birth, loss, love, failure, and achievement, on to a Fulbright scholarship and Harvard Business School. They taught me to believe that anything was possible. They have proven to be the strongest family values I could ever have imagined.

Because microfinance is so manageable in terms of the size of the loan, people have made it the cornerstone to lifting women out of poverty.

It's about not having doubt in your mind and staying focused and not having any preconceived notion about failure. It's just looking forward and staying positive.

I don't fear pain or failure anymore because I'm too grateful for the pains and failures of my past - they have made me who I am, and most of the good things in my life are a direct result of them in some way.

For something to be completely evil is to be nothing. Satan has good attributes - intelligence, for instance - but they are corrupted. I cannot reconcile myself emotionally to alternative understandings of evil.

If you look at life with any honesty and intelligence, it's clear that human nature is dark, vile, selfish, and despondent. But I also see a force in human nature, namely grace, that sometimes works against our natural moral entropy.

In my horror movies, I was always trying to deal with real characters and real character drama played by good actors... Laura Linney, Ethan Hawke, Eric Bana, and Tom Wilkinson, people who don't do horror normally.

I'm married to a nurse, and she is really, really ardent that - in screenplays or movies that I've worked on, that all the medical aspects be properly presented. I think that filmmakers ought to be respectful of all fields and not just be lazy and put nonsense in movies because most people won't know the difference.

The momentum of my creative life and intellectual growth is still the momentum of breaking out of fundamentalism. Because of that, I'm very grateful for it. But I'm also grateful that at the center of it was something that I still believe to be true - those fundamentals of faith.

Children love and want to be loved and they very much prefer the joy of accomplishment to the triumph of hateful failure. Do not mistake a child for his symptom.

Healthy children will not fear life if their elders have integrity enough not to fear death.

The only thing that can save us as a species is seeing how we're not thinking about future generations in the way we live.

The way you 'take history' is also a way of 'making history.'

We cannot leave history entirely to nonclinical observers and to professional historians.

Men have always shown a dim knowledge of their better potentialities by paying homage to those purest leaders who taught the simplest and most inclusive rules for an undivided mankind.

When we looked at the life cycle in our 40s, we looked to old people for wisdom. At 80, though, we look at other 80-year-olds to see who got wise and who not. Lots of old people don't get wise, but you don't get wise unless you age.

There is in every child at every stage a new miracle of vigorous unfolding, which constitutes a new hope and a new responsibility for all.

When you fail, things get real. In fact, they get real real. If your success was a high profile success, then your failure will be a high profile failure. Opportunities and 'friendships' will evaporate. Failure shines a bright light on all relationships. The ones that last are pure and true, which is a true gift.

I always had a deep respect for people who started businesses, but now I cherish them. There's a lot of anxiety and blood, sweat, and tears that goes into this, and I love it.

I'm hopeful. I know there is a lot of ambition in Washington, obviously. But I hope the ambitious realize that they are more likely to succeed with success as opposed to failure.

Freedom itself was attacked this morning by a faceless coward, and freedom will be defended.

We will not waver; we will not tire; we will not falter, and we will not fail. Peace and Freedom will prevail.

The wisest use of American strength is to advance freedom.

The momentum of freedom in our world is unmistakable - and it is not carried forward by our power alone. We can trust in that greater power Who guides the unfolding of the years. And in all that is to come, we can know that His purposes are just and true.

The course of this conflict is not known, yet its outcome is certain. Freedom and fear, justice and cruelty, have always been at war, and we know that God is not neutral between them.

You can't put democracy and freedom back into a box.

I believe that God has planted in every heart the desire to live in freedom.

The terrorists are fighting freedom with all their cunning and cruelty because freedom is their greatest fear - and they should be afraid, because freedom is on the march.

I think you can judge from somebody's actions a kind of a stability and sense of purpose perhaps created by strong religious roots. I mean, there's a certain patience, a certain discipline, I think, that religion helps you achieve.

I know it's going to be the private sector that leads this country out of the current economic times we're in. You can spend your money better than the government can spend your money.

Government does not create wealth. The major role for the government is to create an environment where people take risks to expand the job rate in the United States.

Any government that supports, protects or harbours terrorists is complicit in the murder of the innocent and equally guilty of terrorist crimes.

People forget... that we structured it so that the government, or the people, would be repaid with a really good rate of return. And as it turns out, that aspect of TARP, that's what happened.

The true history of my administration will be written 50 years from now, and you and I will not be around to see it.

The deliberate and deadly attacks which were carried out yesterday against our country were more than acts of terror. They were acts of war.

Leadership to me means duty, honor, country. It means character, and it means listening from time to time.

I have a different vision of leadership. A leadership is someone who brings people together.

People make suggestions on what to say all the time. I'll give you an example; I don't read what's handed to me. People say, 'Here, here's your speech, or here's an idea for a speech.' They're changed. Trust me.

I believe a marriage is between a man and a woman.

Our Nation must defend the sanctity of marriage.

We've climbed the mighty mountain. I see the valley below, and it's a valley of peace.

We know that dictators are quick to choose aggression, while free nations strive to resolve differences in peace.

If you're sick and tired of the politics of cynicism and polls and principles, come and join this campaign.