I think I'm one of five people in the Senate who's never been a politician before. And now that I am a politician, what I find weird about it is that I respect myself less.

The real number of the US' obligations, unfunded obligations that we're passing on to our future generates is more like $70 trillion to $75 trillion. The vast majority of that is health entitlements - Medicare, Obamacare, Medicaid. There's also Social Security, interest on the debt. But fundamentally, health entitlements are the thing that will bankrupt our kids. We need to fix that for the long-term.

In the American constitutional system of three different branches, conflict - and I mean that peaceful, vigorous debate - it's a feature of our system, not a bug. We need less all-or - winner-take-all politics.

We're not at war with all Muslims, we're at war with a subset of Islam that believes in killing in the name of religion, as jihadis do.

We obviously have to honor the commitments that have been made to the people who are already retired or near the retirement age. But we need to tell the truth about the fact that when we set the retirement age at age 65 in America, life expectancy was only 62.

I think the category of perpetual adolescence, it's a new thing, and it's a dangerous thing. Adolescence is a pretty glorious concept. It's about intentionally transitioning from childhood to adulthood. Being stuck in adolescence - that's a hell. Peter Pan is a dystopia, and we forget that.

Let's be clear: Has the U.S. ever made any mistakes? Of course.Is the U.S. at all like [Vladimir] Putin's regime? Not at all.