I've seen, all too often in my career, people coming in to lead agencies and organizations and trying to impose change from the top down. Never works. You never have enough time.

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.

Love is the canvas covering the furniture that you've become a part of

Everyone else reached the Shores of Sleep, but I remained oceans away.

One key to success is knowing the difference between knowledge and wisdom. One is information from the past while the other is the key to the future.

I begged my mom for a beat machine, she spent a crazy amount of money - so there were no more Christmases, no more basketball camps, no more birthday gifts. I always knew that's what I wanted to do.

A poem can use anything to talk about anything.

Governments ... should not force and govern belief, which is a matter for the heart and conscience not for temporal authorities.

In open source, we feel strongly that to really do something well, you have to get a lot of people involved.

Have you known how to take rest? You have done more than he who hath taken empires and cities.

In the whisper of the leaves appears an interchange of love.

To forego even ambition when the end is gained - who can say this is not greatness?