I think what we've learned is that the terrorist threat is serious, but it shifts. You cannot make a single person the sole focus of your counterterrorism.

I think we Americans, of all people, understand the importance of a good, legal, constitutional framework as the basis of political life.

Saddam spent 35 years stealing and wasting money, and all of these systems are very fragile and brittle, and you try to fix one thing and something else gets in trouble.

We've thrown out Saddam and Saddam, dead or alive, is finished in Iraq.

There are 40,000 Iraqi police on duty around the country. If they detect an attack about to happen, the police are the ones who are supposed to stop it.

I think the Iraqi people have shown extraordinary patience and courage in the last few months. They have really put a political system on the way to success, to a real democracy here.

The loss of innocent life is a tragedy for anyone involved in it, but the numbers are really very low.

Iraq is a better place, absolutely worth it.

[Insurgents] pose no strategic threat to the United States or to the Coalition Forces.

If you look back today over the last 25 years, it is a fact that we have had a progressive degeneration of our intelligence community in general; in particular in the field of human intelligence.

These people hate the United States, not for what we do, but for who we are and what we are.

(D)reams are like that: they go in and out of memories and scenes, but they're never real. They're never real, and I hate them because they aren't.

A young girl needs to spread her wings, but a young woman needs roots.

EXCEPTION, n. A thing which takes the liberty to differ from other things of its class, as an honest man, a truthful woman, etc.

She loves you, loathes you, treats you well, then ill. Like a leech or a surgeon's knife, she's double-edged: sometimes she'll cure, but sometimes she will kill.

A brand new mediocrity is thought more of than accustomed excellence.

The way of peace is the way of truth. Truthfulness is even more important than peacefulness.

I believe that it isn't victories but defeats that promote nationalism.

The heart knows nothing of the past, nothing of the future; it knows only of the present.

Why do I get the feeling that if you give me a hard time, I'll tell all of our year-mates your family nickname is Meathead?

Some of the things we said looked worse than we meant them