To invest "in new thinkers and new ideas to address the next generation of challenges facing the United States....animated by the American ideal that each generation will live better than the last." To emphasize "work that is responsive to the changing conditions and problems of our 21st Century information-age economy -- an era shaped by transforming innovation and wealth creation, but also by shortened job tenures, longer life spans, mobile capital, financial imbalances and rising inequality."

"To increase public awareness of the nature and urgency of key economic challenges threatening America's future and accelerate action on them. To meet these challenges successfully, we work to bring Americans together to find sensible, sustainable solutions that transcend age, party lines and ideological divides in order to achieve real results."

"[T]o advance a balanced and realistic understanding of American interests in the Middle East."

"[T]o help: prevent and resolve violent international conflicts; promote post-conflict stability and development; increase conflict management capacity, tools, and intellectual capital worldwide."

"[T]o build cooperation among Western Hemisphere nations and advance a regional agenda of democratic governance, social equity, and economic growth."

Positions itself as "the counterweight to the dealmakers. We work to reclaim democracy. We collaborate with grassroots movements to foster the conditions for long-term change. We promote relationships, linking activists and public officials who share our belief that a better world is possible. We launch inform and sustain democratic movements."

"[F]rom its records, to recall the voice of experience against the making of war, and by the study of these records and their publication, to recall man's endeavors to make and preserve peace, and to sustain for America the safeguards of the American way of life." – Herbert Hoover, statement to the Board of Trustees of Stanford University, 1959.

"[T]o formulate and promote conservative public policies based on the principles of free enterprise, limited government, individual freedom, traditional American values, and a strong national defense."

"[D]edicated to being a resource for its members, government officials, business executives, journalists, educators and students, civic and religious leaders, and other interested citizens in order to help them better understand the world and the foreign policy choices facing the United States and other countries."

"[T]o increase the understanding of public policies based on the principles of limited government, free markets, individual liberty, and peace. The Institute will use the most effective means to originate, advocate, promote, and disseminate applicable policy proposals that create free, open, and civil societies in the United States and throughout the world."