Alliances and international organizations should be understood as opportunities for leadership and a means to expand our influence, not as constraints on our power.

I am fully supportive of 'open service' and committed to LGBT military families.

We live in a world of absolute immediacy. It is an interconnected, combustible world, where technology and many other actions have given nonstate actors a reach, into countries and societies, for both good and evil, that we have never seen before. So it isn't a matter of just state versus state challenges or conflict. The bigger problem is nonstate actors.

You can have all the capabilities; if you don't have the quality people, you don't have much.

And this - this board was - was impanelled in 1951. And it's gone through ups and downs in how the secretaries have used it. But I have put a premium on that advisory board.

This is eventually how Syria will be resolved - through a political settlement.

I don't get into the book-telling business of conversations I have with the president. That's not my style, and I don't think that's a responsible thing to do.