Politics isn't just a game of clashing parties and competing interests. The right reason is to challenge the status quo to serve the common good and to leave this nation better than we found it.

When times are tough constant conflict may be good politics but in the real world cooperation works better. After all nobody's right all the time and a broken clock is right twice a day.

Flipping the dial through available radio stations there will blare out to any listener an array of broadcasts 24/7 propagating Religious Right politics along with what they deem to be 'old-time gospel preaching.' This is especially true of what comes over the airwaves in Bible Belt southern states.

I think things changed as a result of a certain perception of our politics. When we went through our zealous self-righteous period it didn't exactly win us any friends.

The message that I gave on the - on the steps today was that you need to stand for those things that are right and empower the individual. Believe in the power of one person. Don't believe that you can't do it. Everybody wants - everybody wants a shot. That we can all agree on. Beyond that it becomes politics. I'm not talking politics.

Adherents of the new religious right reject the separation of politics and religion but they bring no spiritual insights to politics.

There are times in politics when you must be on the right side and lose.

Politics is a science. You can demonstrate that you are right and that others are wrong.

If you have embraced a creed which appears to be free from the ordinary dirtiness of politics - a creed from which you yourself cannot expect to draw any material advantage - surely that proves that you are in the right?

I don't think politics has anything to do with left right or center. It has to do with trying to do right by people.

Part of the reason that our politics seems so tough right now and facts and science and argument does not seem to be winning the day all the time is because we're hardwired not to always think clearly when we're scared. And the country's scared.

There is probably a perverse pride in my administration... that we were going to do the right thing even if short-term it was unpopular. And I think anybody who's occupied this office has to remember that success is determined by an intersection in policy and politics and that you can't be neglecting of marketing and P.R. and public opinion.

So long as we have enough people in this country willing to fight for their rights we'll be called a democracy.

Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half of the time.

Do you ever get the feeling that the only reason we have elections is to find out if the polls were right?

In most places in the country voting is looked upon as a right and a duty but in Chicago it's a sport.

Politics it seems to me for years or all too long has been concerned with right or left instead of right or wrong.