This may sound like a cliché, but I’ll put it this way. The proudest thing in my life is that my children came home. The proudest moment of my presidency, domestically, was when I signed a piece of civil rights legislation known as the ADA, doing something for the disabled. A massive piece of civil rights legislation that put disabled people, 50 million of them, into the mainstream, or at least removed legal obstacles to their being in the mainstream.

I suppose it’s easy to say, and it may be true, that my role in the development of the laser is perhaps the most important to society. Certainly in terms of applications, and the direct effects on humans, that has been quite important. On the other hand, there are other things which most people don’t know about, and in the scientific area, that I could argue are really quite important, the discoveries there.

The way I see it, there were two great triumphs, two things that I'm proudest of. One is the economic recovery, in which the people of America created -- and filled -- 19 million new jobs. The other is the recovery of our morale. America is respected again in the world and looked to for leadership.

I think three things. One is the great advances in auto safety. I mean, there are tens of thousands of people being saved every year because cars are safer, and millions of people over a decade, injuries prevented. I think that’s a good example of the need to make technology more humane. We may benefit from a lot of technologies, but they exact a cost. Emphysema, cancer, soil contamination, contaminated water, death and injury on the highway. We’ve got to put more effort on making them more humane.