Always be looking for the opportunities, and always be optimistic about what you can do with that opportunity.

Respect for leaders by followers can't be mandated; it must be earned. It has to be given to leaders by their followers.

I think leadership is both a trained thing and a natural gift.

No matter how significant or life-changing your greatest hit or miss might be, neither even begins to define who you are. Each of us is a product of all our experiences and all our interactions with other people. To cite calculus, we are the area under the curve.

Think hard about it: I'm running out of demons. I'm running out of villians. I'm down to Castro and Kim Il Sung.

The day soldiers stop bringing you their problems is the day you have stopped leading them.

We all hoped in 2001 that we could put in place an Afghan government under President Karzai that would be able to control the country, make sure al-Qaeda didn't come back, and make sure the Taliban wasn't resurging. It didn't work out.