Leadership is about doing what you know is right - even when a growing din of voices around you is trying to convince you to accept what you know to be wrong.

From a parent's right to know what their children are doing to protecting citizens across the country from the growing threat of gang violence the House Democrat leadership is simply out to lunch.

The secret to understanding me is I'm not trying to be anybody other than who I actually am. People want candid refreshing leadership. And I've always tried to go with solutions. You know I've always tried to say here's how we get our economy growing here's why we get our debt under control. That's what Mitt Romney is offering.

Growing up in Nashville especially in a music business family means growing up with knowledge that seems like common sense until later in life when you realize people spend thousands of dollars a semester trying to learn or pretending to learn while looking for some intern job on music row.

The whole Twitter phenomenon is really indicative of what's happening in this country. And I say this in condemnation of myself as much as anyone else - we are growing into a nation that has no time desire or capacity for truth. All we can handle is 140 characters of knowledge.

If I had to come up with something that just came to me I think growing up in a small town I want knowledge. I still think today knowledge is one of the keys.

Basically I was a rebel growing up. I got kicked out of six schools. But I don't think that it makes you less of an intellect. You know if you ever crave knowledge there's always a library.

I gained direct knowledge of the life of the poor in big towns: I have lived the narrowing mechanism of its conditioning and feared it.

When it came to political power blacks need not apply. Add to this steaming stew the growing tensions over the Vietnam War and the movement for civil rights and you had plenty of elements to fire the imagination of a novice journalist.

The openness of rural Nebraska certainly influenced me. That openness in a way fosters the imagination. But growing up Lincoln wasn't a small town. It was a college town. It had record stores and was a liberal place.

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.

A poet ought not to pick nature's pocket. Let him borrow and so borrow as to repay by the very act of borrowing. Examine nature accurately but write from recollection and trust more to the imagination than the memory.

I was a precocious only child and then I went through a fat awkward stage for several years so I learned to fall back on my humor and personality when I was growing up. It's how you survive so I think it was more of a natural progression for me developing into comedy.

I don't consider myself to be a major talent so the only solace I can take is to hope I'm growing.

Divorce is one of the key predictors of poverty for a child growing up in a home that's broken.

At home growing up we weren't really poor. We had everything we needed we just didn't have what we wanted.

I was from such a large family that when I first met my wife I told her: 'You can go work outside of the house and I'll stay home and continue making my cartoon strips. Maybe I'll make some commercials nearby you know I'll do anything locally but I would love to just stay at home and raise the kids like I did when I was growing up.'

Like most citizens of popular and international urban centres I don't take advantage of the cultural opportunities. Perhaps this comes from growing up in suburbia. Home is where you eat sleep read watch television and ignore your parents. It is not where you go to the ballet and then attend a heated panel discussion about it afterwards.

We want you to sit down and leave your egos at home and let's get an understanding as to where all this is foolishness coming from. There are others who are putting things out there or throwing a stick and hiding their hand and keeping things built up in the media.

Home life ceases to be free and beautiful as soon as it is founded on borrowing and debt.

Those nations have a very great responsibility at this juncture of the world's affairs for by throwing their joint weight into the scales of history on the right side they may tip the balance decisively in favour of peace.

I realise that I do not change the course of history. I am an actor I do a movie that's the end of it. You have to realise we are just clowns for hire. After I had success it was great at first not to worry about money. It was on my mind when I was growing up.

I had a go at changing history - maybe not all by myself - I fought at the battle of Normandy I slogged through the Ardennes and I celebrated the liberation of Paris on the streets with beautiful French girls throwing flowers at me. I said good-bye to my first true love and discovered what I really wanted to do with my life.

Domestic discretionary spending on education and health care and the environment has been growing at 2 to 3 percent a year. He says we have to rein it in but he ignores the spending category that is the big spike in the budget.