If you want to know who we are, who America is, how we respond to evil-that's it: selflessly, compassionately, unafraid.

I don't buy the hype when everybody is saying how wonderful things are and how great I am, and I don't get too down when people say, "This is a disaster and he's done for."

But what I would say to my successor is that it is important not just to shoot but to aim. And it is important, in this seat, to make sure that you're making your best judgments based on data, intelligence, the information that's coming from your commanders and folks on the ground and you're not being swayed by politics.

John F.Kennedy gave probably the greatest inauguration speech ever that first time, but I guarantee you when he first walked out there he was thinking, "Goodness gracious this is big and I better be up to the task."

You didn't build that. Somebody else made that happen.

The Democrats should not waiver on our core beliefs and principles.

A sportswriter once referred to him as our future president. With a name like Kevin, I don't know whether that's possible.