If I was to describe myself in terms of a political philosophy, I'd cast myself as a social and economic liberal, which is typically what people describe as being left-of-centre on social issues and right-of-centre on economic issues.

What I am interested in are the philosophies of the future. That's what drives me.

What I would like to build is a new centre, a wider, broader centre, which would encompass a lot of different philosophies - you know, the philosophy that I'm putting forward that is a market liberal philosophy and a socially liberal philosophy but would have room in it for a broader church than that.

I'll demand of myself and my own government what, in the past, I insisted of others.

President Bush and I had asked Congress to appropriate a half-billion dollars to school vouchers. We didn't get it, and we were disappointed. But we did not go out and form a corporation to pay for it. That would have been a problem.

Guns are part of the Constitution, and no one is willing to have that tough conversation with Congress and the Senate and the president to say maybe that's got to change. People talk about it - but I mean actual change.

It was not the president's responsibility to run a law enforcement operation. It was ours.

I really do inhabit a system in which words are capable of shaking the entire structure of government, where words can prove mightier than ten military divisions.