Basically, the start of my thinking process is: 'OK, if you didn't have to worry about re-election, what would you be doing?' That's kind of how I'm starting to think.

We are facing a storm that most of us have long feared.

We're learning as we go. We're a lot smarter this time. We understand what it takes to mobilize away from the threat of a hurricane.

We could receive a storm surge of three to five feet.

Ladies and gentlemen, I wish I had better news for you but we are facing a storm that most of us have feared. This is a threat that we've never faced before.

You have drug addicts that are now walking around this city looking for a fix, and that's the reason why they were breaking in hospitals and drugstores. They're looking for something to take the edge off of their jones, if you will.

Get off your ass and get down here to fix the goddamn biggest disaster in the nation's history.

If we're unified, there's nothing we cannot do.

The people of our city are holding on by a thread. Time has run out. Can we survive another night? And who can we depend on? Only God knows.

Basically, the start of my thinking process is: 'OK, if you didn't have to worry about re-election, what would you be doing?' That's kind of how I'm starting to think.

At the Superdome, a young man came up to me holding a baby. He'd run out of diapers. He'd run out of medicine. His baby was sick. The guy's saying, 'Help me! Take my baby.' What could I do? That's the definition of helpless.

At the end of the day, I believe truth is stronger than any lie that's out there.

I always feel that in politics, you have a bridle on. Well, I took the bridle off. And I tell you, it felt pretty good.

I don't think that any person can fix FEMA. I think FEMA needs a total restructuring. I think it needs to be taken from scratch and redone. The regulations are outdated; the rules are outdated.

I need a break from politics, that's for sure. This is the hardest job in America.

I want to continue to stay plugged into New Orleans and help people who are still struggling with the recovery here, and then, if I can help around the country and around the world, absolutely, I'll be open to that.

I was among the people in the Superdome. I knew what was going on every minute. I did not have air conditioning nor shower facilities. I made decisions based upon facts and not what I thought was going to happen. So history will judge me based upon those actions.

I'll just tell you, I'm not a big FEMA fan.

I'm a lifelong Democrat, but I have supported some Republicans. I'm all about results, man. If somebody can deliver, that's where I'm gonna go. It's about who can get the job done.

If it were my decision, I'd knock the Superdome down. If I couldn't knock it down, I'd just open the roof and gut the whole inside - totally modernize it. If you just dust it off and paint a little bit but don't reimage it, the legacy will be horrible.

One of the best moments I've ever had in New Orleans is seeing Bourbon Street filled on a weekend night not long ago. Just watching the city breathe again.

The reality of Katrina didn't really strike me until the first time I flew up in a helicopter and saw areas of the city that I had ridden my bicycle as a youth being fully flooded.

This city will be chocolate at the end of the day. This city will be a majority-African-American city. It's the way God wants it to be. You can't have New Orleans no other way.

When people are dying, bureaucracy should be thrown out of the water.

We're all like children. We may think we grow up, but to me, being grown up is death, stopping thinking, trying to find out things, going on learning.

Kind thoughts are rarer than either kind words or deeds. They imply a great deal of thinking about others. This in itself is rare. But they also imply a great deal of thinking about others without the thoughts being criticisms. This is rarer still.

I'm thinking of going to programming school. Learn how to sit down at any computer and learn to do anything on it. That's all I have left and have interest in.

I am aware of changes gradually taking place in my own designs as part of my thinking on this matter.

I'm against fashionable thinking.

I started thinking about my relationship with my students; I'm this guy who comes in from book - and movie - land and descends on angel wings into their classroom.

Americans seem sometimes to believe that if you are a thinker you must be a frowning bore, because thinking is so damn serious.

I don't know, I think, in times where I'm really nervous, and I'm really under the pressure the worst possible outcome is for me to start thinking about it.

For me, writing is a concentrated form of thinking.

I always voted at my party's call, and I never thought of thinking for myself at all.

In thinking about nanotechnology today, what's most important is understanding where it leads, what nanotechnology will look like after we reach the assembler breakthrough.

Conservatism has had from its inception vigorously positive, intellectually rigorous agenda and thinking. That agenda should have in my three pillars: strengthen the economy, strengthen our security, and strengthen our families.

I am a camera with its shutter open, quite passive, recording, not thinking.

All of this got me thinking about the history of the westward expansion, and got me to wondering how the exploration of the Solar System would be changed if there were an indigenous presence out there.

Romance, like the rabbit at the dog track, is the elusive, fake, and never attained reward which, for the benefit and amusement of our masters, keeps us running and thinking in safe circles.

We don't focus as much in schools on educational knowledge which requires thinking and application, as we do on acquiring facts.

Einstein was a man who could ask immensely simple questions. And what his work showed is that when the answers are simple too, then you can hear God thinking.

It is, therefore, essential that we guard our own thinking and not be among those who cry out against prejudices applicable to themselves, while busy spawning intolerances for others.

I don't think anyone is thinking long-term now.

Pride is pleasure arising from a man's thinking too highly of himself.

I went backwards and forwards over it until I was 22. And then in the past few years I began to say to myself, OK, look, I'm not messing around. This is something I want to attack, instead of thinking, I'll just see what happens with it.

Thinking you're immortal is weirdly similar to being immortal.

Hollywood today is all about being consistent. All thinking in mainstream film business takes place in one box.

I don't mind you thinking I'm stupid, but don't talk to me like I'm stupid.

We were worried about that actually. The cast was thinking that they'd lose their minds. But we didn't.