You know, great powers don't get angry, great powers don't make decisions hastily in a crisis.

Protecting Afghan civilians is the cornerstone of our mission.

Afghanistan is going to be here a long time, and what's critical is that Afghanistan's relationship with its neighbors are, to the maximum extent they can be, constructive and operationally useful.

There are problems in the world today.

I seek as much as I can to mitigate risk.

The thing that I'm always left with is this overwhelming desire for people to be rooted and the only way that they feel rooted is through another person.

We dont want the Taliban to put down roots, or the al Qaeda to put down roots in Afghanistan that can facilitate Afghanistan becoming - once again - a launching pad for international terrorism.

We need to understand what we're saying matters.

Planning is really the hallmark of any large military formation, and it's typically a weakness in new formations and new armies.

We need to have a commander-in-chief who knows what she is doing.

None of us wants any more war.

The quest for knowledge is passion to study.

If you listen to wise sayings, you will have a bright future.

There are different types of salvation." he said, diplomatically. "No." Rena shook him off. "There's only one. In the voice of God, speaking through the space between the stars.

All too often it's easier to be someone else than just being yourself.

If the rabble were lopped off at one end and the aristocrat at the other, all would be well with the country.

Remember, guns don't kill people - unless you practice real hard.

Move somewhere with decent public transit so you don't drive drunk and hit somebody.

How do you fight someone who doesn't care if they get killed? You accommodate them.

Most of the time, you find that the smaller the budget, the more the project is about something substantive.

It seems to me that most people are interested in reading about characters who are richer than they are.