“Service is the currency that keeps our economy moving. I serve you in one business, you serve me in another. When either of us improves, the economy gets a little better. When both of us improve, people are sure to take notice. When everyone improves, the whole world grows stronger and closer together.”

Source: Out Of The Crisis (1982), p. 2

2013, Fifth State of the Union Address (February 2013)
Context: The American people don’t expect government to solve every problem. They don’t expect those of us in this chamber to agree on every issue. But they do expect us to put the nation’s interests before party. They do expect us to forge reasonable compromise where we can. For they know that America moves forward only when we do so together, and that the responsibility of improving this union remains the task of us all.

Speech to the World Federation of Taiwanese Associations, March 17, 2002
Pet Phrases, 2002

DPP Campaign speech, November 5, 2001
Pet Phrases, 2001
Variant: I'm going to improve the economy in Taiwan！

Salon interview (1996)
Context: Nothing really improves us. Whatever improves one person will disimprove another. Some people are paralyzed by the consciousness of death, other people live with it. … The fatwa certainly made me think about it a lot more than I ever had. I guess I know I'm going to die, but then, so are you. And one of the things that I thought a lot about at the time of the fatwa and ever since is that quite a few of the people I really care about died during this period, all about the same age as I am, and they were not under a death sentence. They just died, of lung cancer, AIDS, whatever. It occurred to me that you don't need a fatwa, it can happen anytime.

During the opening of Longan Season in Nantau, August 30, 2003
Pet Phrases, 2003

Source: Dictionary of political economy, 1818, p. 159, as cited in: Zabieglik (2002).

During the engagement party of his son, June 11, 2005
Pet Phrases, 2005

June 27, 2005
Pet Phrases, 2005