Peace comes through dealing with people. Peace doesn't come at the end of a bayonet or the end of a gun.

This is a complicated time to govern in the world today because of so much going on and it's coming at us at such an unprecedented rate.

Foreign policy is all about a universe of bad decisions, imperfect decisions; every situation is different. The dynamics, the atmospherics, the people, the pressures, the geopolitical realities shift.

Closing Guantanamo Bay is not a military solution. The closing of that prison, which I support, I supported it when I was in the Senate, requires more than just a military dimension.

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

You can't just drop the 82nd Airborne into Baghdad and it will all be over.

I'm the first secretary of defense that's had to deal with sequestration. I've prepared two budgets that deal with sequestration. And you bring the chiefs together, the leadership of this enterprise together, to work through, how do we then take these cuts? Where do we apply those cuts? Readiness is the first thing that suffers.