Presidents quickly realize that while a single act might destroy the world they live in, no one single decision can make life suddenly better or can turn history around for the good.

One of the lessons of history is that nothing is often a good thing to do and always a clever thing to say.

Now, there are some who would like to rewrite history - revisionist historians is what I like to call them.

Religion is part of the human make-up. It's also part of our cultural and intellectual history. Religion was our first attempt at literature, the texts, our first attempt at cosmology, making sense of where we are in the universe, our first attempt at health care, believing in faith healing, our first attempt at philosophy.

The awareness that health is dependent upon habits that we control makes us the first generation in history that to a large extent determines its own destiny.