“We must have public officials who will stand up and tell the people exactly what they think... Our failure in recent years has not been the failure of the people to meet the challenges placed before them, but rather the failure of both our great political parties to place those challenges honestly and courageously before the people, and to trust the willingness of the people to do the things that really need to be done.”

“We all struggle with our failure to communicate and our failure to reach beyond fear to love people.”

“But that pain is then inflicted onto other people, often many other people, all because we lack the courage to stand up and be accountable for all the things both good and bad, we have done in our lives. So by lying, that pain, rather than staying where it belongs, with the person who has done something wrong, is handed out to the innocent. To be a liar therefore is to be a coward.”

“In 1959, Vice-President Nixon, speaking to members of California’s Commonwealth Club, was asked if he’d like to see the parties undergo an ideological realignment—the sort that has since taken place—and he replied, “I think it would be a great tragedy . . . if we had our two major political parties divide on what we would call a conservative-liberal line.” He continued, “I think one of the attributes of our political system has been that we have avoided generally violent swings in Administrations from one extreme to the other. And the reason we have avoided that is that in both parties there has been room for a broad spectrum of opinion.” Therefore, “when your Administrations come to power, they will represent the whole people rather than just one segment of the people.”

“Why is it our failures only show us more clearly the people we are failing?”

“People think that the opposite of success is failure, but it's not. Failure is part of the process of success.”