There are many qualities that make a great leader. But having strong beliefs, being able to stick with them through popular and unpopular times, is the most important characteristic of a great leader.

St. Paul's Chapel stands - without so much as a broken window. Little miracle.

Change is not a destination, just as hope is not a strategy.

Now we understand much more clearly. why people from all over the world want to come to New York and to America. It's called freedom.

The use of military force against Iran would be very dangerous. It would be very provocative. The only thing worse would be Iran being a nuclear power.

It's about time law enforcement got as organized as organized crime.

When you confront a problem you begin to solve it.

So I think we're, we're, we're as broad a political party, if not broader than the Democratic Party, just in a different political spectrum.

Leaders need to be optimists. Their vision is beyond the present.

America needs to be defended. We need missile defense to better police the skies over the United States.

When I said the city would be stronger, I didn't know that. I just hoped it. There are parts of you that say, 'Maybe we're not going to get through this.' You don't listen to them.

On September 11, 2001, we thought we were going to be attacked many, many times between then and now. We haven't been. I believe we had a president who made the right decision at the right time... to put us on offense against terrorists.

There are many qualities that make a great leader. But having strong beliefs, being able to stick with them through popular and unpopular times, is the most important characteristic of a great leader.

There is no city in America that has reduced crime as much as we have in the last three years. This is not the product of accident. This is the product of design.

What we can borrow from Ronald Reagan... is that great sense of optimism. He led by building on the strengths of America, not running America down.

In choosing Governor Sarah Palin as his running mate, John McCain has chosen for the future.

The Republican Party is a much bigger tent than people give it credit for. We have a lot of what I guess you all call moderate Republicans.

In choosing a president, we really don't choose a Republican or Democrat, a conservative or liberal. We choose a leader.

With the spirit of my administration, New York City is poised for dramatic change. The era of fear has had a long enough reign.

As Americans, we're not sure we share values. We're sometimes even afraid to use the word 'values.' We talk about teaching ethics in schools - people say, 'What ethics? Whose ethics? Maybe we can't.' And they confuse that with teaching of religion.

As mayor, I used to always feel the important thing is that people respect me, not love me - but it is really much nicer when they love you, too. I'm going to try to keep it that way.

Blacks commit murder eight times more per capita than any other group in our society. If I had put all of my police officers on Park Avenue and none in Harlem, thousands and thousands more blacks would've been killed during the eight years that I was mayor.

Bonuses balance my budget in New York City. The bigger the bonuses on Wall Street, the more money I had to spend on poor people. The New York City budget is determined greatly by the bonuses given on Wall Street.

Civilization must stand up and combat the current collapse of governance, the rise of violence, and the spread of chaos and fear in many parts of the world.

Courage is managing fear to accomplish what you want to accomplish. And it's a great demonstration of love. It's really what love is. It's finding areas in which other people are more important than you.

Freedom is about authority. Freedom is about the willingness of every single human being to cede to lawful authority a great deal of discretion about what you do.

I am a free market Republican. I am against subsidies, in most cases.

I am open and will continue to be open to ways to limit abortion. What I am not open to is to removing the right.

I can't be the Mayor of L.A. I hate the Dodgers. I'm a Yankee fan. Yankee fans can't ever root for the Dodgers.

I don't invest in the stock market. I did it a long, long time ago when I was really young, and I got involved in all the investigations and all the prosecutions, and I felt it was better if I didn't make individual investments. So I'm invested in funds, but not in individual - not in individual stocks.

I get through difficult situations by looking at how other people have gone through them. I say to myself, 'If they can go through it, then I can.' Or, If they can go through worse, I can go through whatever I'm going through.

I probably saved more black lives as mayor of New York City than any mayor in the history of this city. And I did it by having to use police officers in black areas where there was an astounding amount of crime. If that crime was in white areas, police officers would be in white areas.

I think one of the biggest mistakes that America has made - and maybe the world because this is, sort of, the core of communism and socialism - is that you can have perfect solutions to social problems like poverty, like crime. You're not going to eliminate all crime. Maybe you'll never eliminate all poverty.

I think that taxes have to exist. They should exist at the lowest possible level, and to the extent that we can, we shouldn't invent more. Maybe that's my experience being mayor of New York City, where we had so many taxes.

I think the world is much better off without Saddam Hussein than with him.

I think to adequately manage a crisis, you have to see it. Because there's only so much somebody else can tell you about it, and they impose their own distortions on the description. You need to see it yourself.

I was Mayor of New York during a great Yankees dynasty. I got to preside over the city during four Yankees championships.

I was a Yankee fan in Brooklyn because my father was a Yankee fan. And my father was required to live in Brooklyn with my mother's family, who were all Dodger fans. So he was surrounded by Dodger fans. He was a Yankee fan. So his revenge was to make me a Yankee fan.

I was pretty successful before Sept. 11 and fully expected that when I left being mayor I would be very successful.

I was the person, I think, who first said the evening of September 11 that we shouldn't hold this against the Arab community, the Muslim community. We should focus on the individuals and that groups that were involved and not participate in group blame.

I'll tell you what makes me feel worthwhile: organizing and solving other people's problems. It makes me feel good to go to Mexico City and figure out theories on how you can reorganize and reduce crime. To me, it's one of the more fulfilling ways to spend a day.

I'm not sure if President Obama is an ideologue or a pragmatist. I am hoping and praying he's a pragmatist.

I've probably saved more black lives as mayor of New York City than any mayor in New York City with the possible exception of Mike Bloomberg, who was there for 12 years.

In an emergency, you rarely get one consistent piece of advice. You usually have two or three people with two or three different ideas. So you want to have your own set of thoughts.

In the 9/11 Commission Report, one of the things they point out is that firefighters saved just about everybody below the fire. I don't think they realize how proud the fire department is of that. Because, conceivably, that's all they could have done. They could not have gotten above that fire.

Liberty is ceding a certain amount of your ability to do what you want so that everybody else can live in peace and freedom and respecting the rights of other people.

Lincoln made mistakes. Roosevelt made mistakes. Eisenhower made mistakes. The Battle of the Bulge was the biggest intelligence failure in American military history, much bigger than any in Vietnam or now. We didn't know that the Soviets were moving 400,000 or 500,000 troops. We missed it.

My attempt is to try to broaden the base of the Republican Party, to try to bring in people that can agree and that can disagree on that, because I think the issues that we face about terrorism, about our economy, about the growth of our economy are so important that we have to have the biggest outreach possible.

My father taught me, in boxing, that when you - particularly when you get hit in the face for the first time - you're going to panic. That instead of panicking, just accept it. Stay calm. And any time anybody hits you, they always leave themselves open to be hit.