Nations, great nations have limitations. All nations have limitations. Even great powers have limitations.

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.

I would not trade America's position in the world - our ledger, our debts and assets - for any country in the world. There isn't a country in the world even close to America.

We live in a world where there are dangerous people, there are bad people.

[Sheehan] deserves some consideration, and I think that should have been done right from the beginning.

I have never believed you go to war in Iraq, you go to war in Afghanistan, and believe that you can deal with those battlefields, those countries, in microcosms, or narrow channels.

Imposing democracy through force is a roll of the dice.