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Nations without a past are contradictions in terms. What makes a nation is the past, what justifies one nation against others is the past, and historians are the people who produce it.

There comes a time in the history of nations when their peoples must become fully reconciled to their past if they are to go forward with confidence to embrace their future.

But through world wars and a Great Depression, through painful social upheaval and a Cold War, and now through the attacks of September 11, 2001, our Nation has indeed survived.

Nations whose nationalism is destroyed are subject to ruin.

The United Nations system is still the best instrument for making the world less fragile.

A weak people and its equally debilitated leaders are bludgeoned by history. It maims them into the cripples that they are meant to be.

Our global economy is much more fragile than many of us realize.

The history of our country is not the history of any other country in the world which is either practicing advanced democracy or struggling to lay the foundation for democracy.

All nations are more tolerant of their own mistakes and weaknesses than of the mistakes and weaknesses of others.

We are not being arrogant or complacent when we are said that our country, as a united nation, has never in its entire history, enjoyed such a confluence of encouraging possibilities.