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.

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 The regulations are outdated; the rules are outdated.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.

Terrorism, ladies and gentlemen, in my eyes I have a very, very, very simple explanation. Gangs of criminals, killers, used unfortunately by certain governments in the past for political purposes, who are on their own now as gangs.

You can sway an audience if you win the women over. The gentlemen will follow 'cause they can be so foolish like that at times, they are easily led.

IT has been observed by several gentlemen, in vindication of this motion, that if it should be carried, neither my life, liberty, nor estate will be affected.

Idealism is the noble toga that political gentlemen drape over their will to power.

Entertaining these opinions of the course to be pursued, I beg of gentlemen to look at the question, as I have done, in a calm review of facts and of principles.

Like two single gentlemen rolled into one.

Most gentlemen don't like love, they just like to kick it around.

It is possible that blondes also prefer gentlemen.

I must therefore implore your indulgence for a pretty long and plain development of my views concerning that cause which the citizens of New York, and you particularly, gentlemen, honour with generous interest.

Ladies and gentlemen, I take office at a time in which the world is living in extreme contradictions.

Gentlemen have talked a great deal of patriotism. A venerable word, when duly practised.

While some of them acknowledge the obligation of natural morality in their mode of conducting their cases, and preserve their individual character as gentlemen, there are others who acknowledge no law, human or divine, but the law of Scotland.

I sat through Ladies and Gentlemen, the Rolling Stones like three times at the Skyway when it came out.

Yes, across the board, these gentlemen understand they have the power to make a difference and even educate people to injustices that are occurring in their worlds.

You know, gentlemen, that I do not owe any personal income tax. But nevertheless, I send a small check, now and then, to the Internal Revenue Service out of the kindness of my heart.

First of all, ladies and gentlemen, you must forget that you are singers.

Most of our ancestors were not perfect ladies and gentlemen. The majority of them weren't even mammals.

The truth does not require a majority to prevail, ladies and gentlemen. The truth is its own power. The truth will out. Never forget that.

But, gentlemen, can any of us say that as a result of such overwhelming sacrifices of money, of men, of ideals, and of civil dignity the sense of security has indeed been attained?

There is something suspicious about music, gentlemen. I insist that she is, by her nature, equivocal. I shall not be going too far in saying at once that she is politically suspect.

Gentlemen, start your egos.

A church is a place in which gentlemen who have never been to heaven brag about it to persons who will never get there.

Here, again, as I conceive, gentlemen forget that this government is a republican one, resting exclusively in the intelligence and virtue of the People.

We will that all men know we blame not all the lords, nor all those that are about the king's person, nor all gentlemen nor yeomen, nor all men of law, nor all bishops, nor all priests, but all such as may be found guilty by just and true inquiry and by the law.

I shall support the law, for the law gentlemen, is the firm and solid basis of civil society, the guardian of liberty, the protection of the innocent, the terror of the guilty, and the scourge of the wicked.