I had no difficulty as Secretary of Defense moving from the Bush administration to the Obama administration.

What I know concerns me. What I don't know concerns me even more. What people aren't telling me worries me the most.

I'm a big advocate of drones.

No policy has proved more successful in making friends for the United States, during the cold war and since, than educating students from abroad at our colleges and universities.

I have tried to maintain civil relationships with everyone I meet - and, even if I violently disagree with them, try to be respectful.

A wild and crazy weekend involves sitting on the front porch, smoking a cigar, reading a book.

I've been very sensitive for a long time to the repeated pattern, during economic hard times or after a war, of the United States' essentially unilaterally disarming.

Even when I was at CIA, I'd go to visit foreign leaders and I'd say, 'You know, I'm not a diplomat. I'm just an old CIA guy'... I said, 'If I wanted to be diplomatic, I'd have been a diplomat.'

One of my favorite little sayings is, 'To avoid criticism, say nothing, do nothing, be nothing.

Future U.S. political leaders – those for whom the Cold War was not the formative experience that it was for me – may not consider the return on America’s investment in NATO worth the cost.

I think that Iran with a nuclear weapon is extremely destabilizing. I think it could precipitate a nuclear arms race in the region.

Romeo: I dreamt a dream tonight.Mercutio: And so did I.Romeo: Well, what was yours?Mercutio: That dreamers often lie.

I get up extremely early in the morning.

Sometimes you sacrifice legibility to increase impact.

No, the real American has not yet arrived. He is only in the Crucible, I tell you - he will be the fusion of all races, perhaps the coming superman.

Ringo is Ringo, that's all there is to it. And he's every bloody bit as warm, unassuming, funny and kind as he seems. He was quite simply the heart of the Beatles

We are raised to honor all the wrong explorers and discoverers thieves planting flags, murderers carrying crosses. Let us at last praise the colonizers of dreams.

The law is the last result of human wisdom acting upon human experience for the benefit of the public.

There's not really genres as storytelling in Austria, unfortunately.

By perceiving ourselves as part of the river, we take responsibility for the river as a whole.

There were a lot of artists in St. Ives. In fact, since the time of Whistler, St. Ives has been noted as an artist colony.