After high school in 1969, I was appointed to the Air Force Academy. In '73, I studied for my postgraduate degree and became a USAF pilot in 1974. After my discharge in 1980, I became a commercial pilot and flew my first airline flight at Pacific Southwest Airlines in 1980.

Chesley Sullenberger

I guess HBO did a giant 'War in the Pacific' mini-series that cost, like, a fortune, and there was a little moment where they literally had no money. And even though the show had become kind of a cult hit, there was an issue of whether they could actually afford to do it.

Adam McKay

The old charters of Massachusetts, Virginia, and the Carolinas had given title to strips of territory extending from the Atlantic westward to the Pacific.

Albert Bushnell Hart

Most of the Amazon basin is as flat as a pancake and laced with extravagantly meandering waterways. One school of thought holds that more than 145 million years ago, when Africa and South America were joined, the Amazon's main stem was connected to the Niger River and actually flowed in the opposite direction, toward the Pacific Ocean.

Alex Shoumatoff

Climate change knows no borders. It will not stop before the Pacific islands and the whole of the international community here has to shoulder a responsibility to bring about a sustainable development.

Angela Merkel

My heart would race when I went to Pacific Science Center because I would pretend to be an astronaut, and now I get to come back and give back to the community that I think compelled me to where I am.

Anne McClain

In 2005, I founded the Democratic Pacific Union, an international organization of 28 democratic countries to promote democracy, peace and prosperity in the Pacific region.

Annette Lu

Taiwan matters because of its vital role in spreading democracy in East Asia. Taiwan matters because of its strategic importance to promote peace in the Pacific region.

Annette Lu

I've always said that L.A. is the city of America's future. It is to the world what London was in the 19th century and New York in the 20th because of the growth of the Pacific Rim countries. We're the portal to the emerging world.

Antonio Villaraigosa

I came to my first Colts training camp in July of 1950, and it was murder, absolute murder. We had a coach named Clem Crow who must have been nuts. You got to remember that I'd been a Marine, had gone through basic training and spent 26 months in the Pacific during WWII, but the Marine drill instructors had nothing on Clem.

Art Donovan

Pacific Islands are among those that contribute least to global warming, yet suffer most.

Ban Ki-moon

Whether our forebears were strangers who crossed the Atlantic or the Pacific or the Rio Grande, we are here only because this country welcomed them in and taught them that to be an American is about something more than what we look like, or what our last names are, or how we worship.

Barack Obama

The North Korean landscape is strikingly beautiful in places. It could be said to resemble America's Pacific Northwest - but substantially drained of color.

Barbara Demick

It was a long time before I understood what the word 'specific' was. I remember being a kid and thinking it was 'pacific,' and being like, 'Can you be more pacific?' And I believed that for maybe five, six years until someone was like, 'It's 'specific.''

Baron Vaughn

The food in Sydney is an Asian Pacific cuisine. It's eclectic but above all it's fresh, inventive and creative and that's what I love about it.

Baz Luhrmann

Following one of the most violent conflicts in human history, the United States and Japan built a deep and abiding friendship - an alliance that has underwritten unprecedented economic growth and security in the Asia Pacific for half a century. It is an alliance based on mutual interests and shared values and the ties between our people.

Ben Rhodes

We have enormous interests in the Asia Pacific. In addition to our economy, we need to secure our allies, protect our environment, promote peace and stability, ensure the free-flow of commerce, and stand up for human rights.

Ben Rhodes

President Obama has made the Asia Pacific region a focus of his foreign policy, and Vietnam - a large, growing economy in the heart of Southeast Asia - is critical to those efforts.

Ben Rhodes

There is no question that our security and prosperity will be increasingly tied to the Asia Pacific. If America doesn't set the rules of the road for trade in this region, other nations will.

Ben Rhodes

Since taking office, President Obama has pursued a policy that focused more American resources and engagement in the Asia-Pacific, a region that will increasingly define opportunity and security in the 21st century.

Ben Rhodes

The Asia Pacific region within TPP encompasses nearly 40 percent of the world's GDP. Shaping the rules of the road for trade in this region is good for our workers and businesses - and it is good for our national security as well.

Ben Rhodes