Bogging down large armies in historically complex, dangerous areas ends in disaster.

Assad must go. He's lost the legitimacy to govern.

No one person leads alone - can't do it, it's impossible. It doesn't make any sense. You need a team.

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.

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.

Politics or ideology must not get in the way of sound planning.

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.