One advantage of not being in power is that we can dream of reshaping the world exactly as we please.

I'm not one of those politicians, to my probably discredit, who thinks very far ahead. It has to feel right to me and not be about a careful plot and plan.

Though I have an idea about the climax, it always changes when we start shooting.

I'll say I'm happy doing my thing. No one says 'no comment' anymore.

Now that I'm at Hendrick, it makes me appreciate my years I had at Ganassi even more. We did way more and accomplished way more than we probably should have compared to what resources Hendrick has.

The way we always want to compromise between everything, I think that's really Belgian. I think I'm really Belgian for that, because I never make choices. That's my problem, actually.

From now on it is only through a conscious choice and through a deliberate policy that humanity can survive.

I was elected on April 13 and sworn in two days later, so I had no orientation. I had to figure things out as I went along.

Which thread shall I choose, Lord? There are so many. They hang before my eyes like strands of silk in a doorway. Each promising that it will weave the finest tapestry of my life. But it is not my tapestry. It is not my life. So again I ask, which thread do I choose? Which strand will pass through the very eye of the needle?

The same strength which has extended our power beyond a continent has also interwoven our destiny with the destiny of many peoples and brought us into a vast web of history in which other wills, running in oblique or contrasting directions to our own, inevitably hinder or contradict what we most fervently desire. We cannot simply have our way, not even when we believe our way to have the "happiness of mankind" as its promise.

O]ne duty may be said to be too long, when its shuts out another, and then it ceaseth, indeed, to be a duty(274).

Thomas Merton, the American monk, pointed out that we may spend our whole life climbing the ladder of success, only to find when we get to the top that our ladder is leaning against the wrong wall.