Our Declaration of Independence was the start of a conversation about how to achieve life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness for every citizen. Our Constitution was always intended to grow and adapt as we formed a more perfect union, established justice, and ensured peace, security, and the blessings of liberty.

The United States was born in revolution and nurtured by struggle. Throughout our history, the American people have befriended and supported all those who seek independence and a better way of life.

As for 'Independence Day,' we never intended to do any films in that series beyond the first one.

Grant that the true organ with which the beautiful is apprehended is the imagination, and it follows that all arts are likely to affect the feelings indirectly.

The delicate thing about the university is that it has a mixed character, that it is suspended between its position in the eternal world, with all its corruption and evils and cruelties, and the splendid world of our imagination.

Growing up, I didn't have a lot of toys, and personal entertainment depended on individual ingenuity and imagination - think up a story and go live it for an afternoon.

All the people who follow me on Twitter know my sense of humor. I sometimes forget the blogosphere will give it more weight than I intended.

Candidates should be extremely cautious in displaying a sense of humor. If he or she tells a joke with a point, there is almost certain to be some minority group offended.

I have never believed much in luck, and my sense of humor has tended to walk on the dark side.

Poor David Hume is dying fast, but with more real cheerfulness and good humor and with more real resignation to the necessary course of things, than any whining Christian ever dyed with pretended resignation to the will of God.

Well, he's not going to get any nicer. He's a genocidal racist maniac. He's one of these people who thinks the world was a great place when Voldemort ruled the world. He's particularly offended by mixed-blood Mudbloods, the product of wizards and humans. So I hope he goes into therapy.

My first year of high school, I attended Duval High, home of the Duval Tigers. It's located in one of most notorious neighborhoods in the Prince George's County, Maryland, area.

Walt Whitman defended the sacredness of love, the purity of passion - the passion that builds every home and fills the world with art and song.

Last year the National Sorry Day Committee consulted with stolen generations people in every State and Territory, and concluded that programmes set up in response to the Bringing Them Home Report are reaching only a small fraction of those they are intended to help.

Any time you make a movie where you're living in a certain head space for an extended period of time, it's tough not to take a little piece home with you.

Things began to improve when I went to Rangoon. To begin with, my father was promoted, which meant he was at home more. The matriarchal society was ended, and for the first time, I went to a boys' school.

I hated baseball. I really didn't like baseball at all until someone decided they were going to pay me... Every year I played in the big leagues, the day the season ended, I called my buddies in West Virginia and said, 'I'll be home tomorrow.'

The men and women of the Greatest Generation answered the call to serve; whether at home or abroad, they defended the freedoms and liberties we enjoy today.

Part of the failing of mainstream history has been a reverential air often appended to the colonial era, underpinned by a rose-tinted nostalgia for a lost empire.

The more I draw and write, the more I realise that accidents are a necessary part of any creative act, much more so than logic or wisdom. Sometimes a mistake is the only way of arriving at an original concept, and the history of successful inventions is full of mishaps, serendipity and unintended results.

In my view, far from deserving condemnation for their courageous reporting, the New York Times, the Washington Post and other newspapers should be commended for serving the purpose that the Founding Fathers saw so clearly.

The belief that public health measures are not intended for people like us is widely held by many people like me. Public health, we assume, is for people with less - less education, less-healthy habits, less access to quality health care, less time and money.

The truth is women use contraception not only as a way to prevent unintended pregnancies, but also to improve their health and the health of their families. Increased access to contraception is directly linked to declines in maternal and infant mortality.

The Internet was appealing partly because it was something I could do in bed and feel like I was achieving something. I had an operation when I was 13 and ended up with complications, so I was in and out of the hospital. The bottom line is you can get through health challenges. It's part of why I was so driven.