RICHARD LUGAR

Ethanol is a premier, high performance fuel. It has tremendous environmental benefits and is a key component to energy independence for our country.

The beginning of my political career was not promising. I ran for junior class president at Shortridge High school and was runner up. I ran again in the senior year with the same result. But opportunity came ironically, or fortunately, when I returned to Indianapolis after serving in the Navy.

I am convinced that the majority of American people do understand that we have a moral responsibility to foster the concepts of opportunity, free enterprise, the rule of law, and democracy. They understand that these values are the hope of the world.

The time frame is very small to disarm the militia, to bring about a security situation in which the governing council, the 24 Iraqis or however many others they appoint, can govern the country.

Grandchildren have taught me how important the future is. I try to look through their eyes and envision what's in their imagination. What's the world going to look like when they're my age? That really does take a huge imagination.

If I could offer but one helpful hint to young Hoosiers hoping to better their odds for success in life, I would simply note the importance of thoughtful reading.

By furthering the use of ethanol, farmers are presented with the opportunity to produce a cash crop by collecting their agricultural wastes.

It's very unlikely that we're going to send more troops to Iraq. We are going to have to train the Iraqis faster and harder.

We must perfect a worldwide system of accountability for nuclear, biological and chemical weapons.

I would like to raise my glass to friendship between Russia and the United States.

Americans who may be going to the largest embassy we've ever had.

Despite elections and the experience of post-Soviet personal freedoms by the Russian people, the fate of democracy in Russia is perhaps more ambiguous now than at any time since the collapse of the Communist system.

The United States cannot feed every person, lift every person out of poverty, cure every disease, or stop every conflict. But our power and status have conferred upon us a tremendous responsibility to humanity.

Declining overseas admissions costs us not only much needed revenues for colleges and universities, but much more importantly, we lose the best opportunity we have to introduce foreign students to all that America has to offer the world.

That first responsibility as a school board member - meals for latch-key children - was absolutely critical in my understanding of the extraordinary problems of poverty.

Very rarely does food enhance the conversation. If the food is really good, there'll be much less conversation because you'd be concentrating too much on the food.

There are no shortcuts to victory. We must commit ourselves to the slow, painstaking work of foreign policy day by day and year by year.

Intelligence is not easy to come by.

Too often bipartisanship is equated with centrism or deal-cutting. Bipartisanship is not the opposite of principle. One can be very conservative or very liberal and still have a bipartisan mind-set. Such a mind-set acknowledges that the other party is also patriotic and may have some good ideas. It acknowledges that national unity is important, and that aggressive partisanship deepens cynicism, sharpens political vendettas and depletes the national reserve of good will that is critical to our survival in hard times

Our political system is losing its ability to even explore alternatives …. I hope we will demand judgment from our leaders.

My Republican compatriots do not feel that people ought to work with Democrats across the aisle—Compromise is a bad word.

It is unfortunate that there is not a government in Iraq that has been able to unify the Shiites and the Sunnis sufficiently. They are not currently fighting together.

Secretary Perry became the 19th secretary of defense and the first enlisted man to serve in that role. He had time in the highest ranks of the Pentagon and was instrumental in the dismantlement of the nuclear warheads in the United States and Russia. Throughout his career, he has devoted himself to protecting the interests of the nation.

I compliment President Obama on having these summits each year in Washington in which people have talked about ridding the world of materials of mass destruction.

Of other countries, to impose economic sanctions, it'd really begin to dry up the enormous amount of money coming into North Korea, a lot of it from China - from Chinese banks - whereas, if we sanction the Chinese banks, there could be friction with China. But this is something we're going to have to face.