The challenges posed by threats like terrorism, proliferation, and cyber attacks are not going away any time soon, and for our intelligence community to be effective over the long haul, we must maintain the trust of the American people and people around the world.

Despite all the noise and hullabaloo - military cooperation, intelligence cooperation, all of that has continued. We have defended them consistently in every imaginable way. But I also believe that both for our national interests and Israel's national interests that allowing an ongoing conflict between Israelis and Palestinians that could get worse and worse over time is a problem. And that settlements contribute.

When what you’re doing doesn’t work for 50 years, it’s time to try something new.

If you listen to the rhetoric, it is so over-the-top and so overheated, and most importantly, is not acknowledging the fact that there's nothing else [like guns] in our lives that we purchase where we don't try to make it a little safer if we can.

We are committed to a world in which we keep America safe, but we recognize that our power doesn't just flow from our extraordinary military but also flows from the strength in our ideals and our principles and our values.

We don't ask you to believe in our ability to bring change, rather, we ask you to believe in yours.

Hope is not blind optimism. It's not ignoring the enormity of the task ahead or the roadblocks that stand in our path. It's not sitting on the sidelines or shirking from a fight. Hope is that thing inside us that insists, despite all evidence to the contrary, that something better awaits us if we have the courage to reach for it, and to work for it, and to fight for it. Hope is the belief that destiny will not be written for us, but by us, by the men and women who are not content to settle for the world as it is, who have the courage to remake the world as it should be.