American Quotes

I have instincts.

I have always voted for who I believed was the best person.

I have always that there ought to be some kind of mandatory national service, not necessarily in the military but to show everybody that freedom isn't free, that everybody has an obligation to the nation as a community.

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

I had no concerns - I had no reason to have concerns based on what was available to me about North's contacts with the private sector people, but I didn't think a CIA person should do it.

I don't think any president that I worked with has ever said 'pretty please.'

I consider myself a Republican.

Health care costs are eating the Defense Department alive.

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.'

Defense is not like other discretionary spending.

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

We talk a lot in our home together about where we're going, what I'm doing.

We started this mostly from an intellectual place.

We have to be careful in how we use this light shined on us.

There's a false perception that women in Africa somehow don't love their babies they way we do, don't grieve their loss the way we would. That is simply not true.

There are absolutely lots of teachers who are trying to come into the profession, but they are not attracted enough to say, 'I'm going to switch careers to do it,' or they are often not retained... because the salaries and the compensation aren't there to make it happen.

The premise of this foundation is one life on this planet is no more valuable than the next.

My background was computer science and business school, so eventually I worked my way up where I was running product groups - development, testing, marketing, user education.

Microsoft certainly makes products for the Macintosh.

Kids are falling through the cracks and nobody notices it. That to me is what's wrong with the school system.

In the developing world, it's about time that women are on the agenda. For instance, 80 percent of small-subsistence farmers in sub-Saharan Africa are women, and yet all the programs in the past were predominantly focused on men.

If you are successful, it is because somewhere, sometime, someone gave you a life or an idea that started you in the right direction. Remember also that you are indebted to life until you help some less fortunate person, just as you were helped.

I'm wholehearted about whatever I do.

I'm constantly saying to myself, 'I'm lucky I was born in the United States.'

I want to live as private a life as I can because of our children.

I think the Americans need to understand that a lot of times the children are bored in school, and that is why they are not staying in.

I think it's very important that we instill in our kids that it has nothing to do with their name or their situation that they're growing up in; it has to do with who they are as an individual.

I realized that the only way to get into a good college was to be valedictorian or salutatorian. So that was my goal.

I learn in a different way. I learn experientially.

I care much more about saving the lives of mothers and babies than I do about a fancy museum somewhere.