The sooner you learn that life is not fair, the better off you'll be, because you'll spend less time railing against life's unfairness and feeling aggrieved and entitled, and more time figuring out how to maximize your assets, and your talents and how to deal with things that you're not very good at.

As Americans we like to believe that we're loved in international politics or that people like what we're doing. But we also recognize that we have an extraordinary responsibility to do what we think is right, and that sometimes what we do is not very popular.

I've never really been a workaholic. I work very hard, but I also enjoy playing. I think it's important to have a balanced and well-rounded life.

I believed Afghanistan was always going to be hard. It's the fifth poorest country in the world. And when you fly over it, you realize that there's not much there. And, of course, it has the problem, too, of being on that border with Pakistan in basically an ungoverned region that has given the terrorists a staging ground. So it's a very difficult place. But I do believe that the mission there can succeed if success is defined as helping the Afghans to prevent the Taliban from being an existential threat to the Afghan government.

[My favorite dish to cook] is fried chicken, and by the way I'm good at it, too. I make really good fried chicken.

I'm not personally fearful, but I look out, and there are a number of things that concern me, and I'm hopeful that we can overcome them.

In light of 50 years of bondage of Eastern Europe, [invading the Soviet Union in 1948 to prevent it from acquiring nuclear weapons] was probably a reasonable thing to do.