Power is nothing unless you can turn it into influence.

This is the democratic process at work, What you're seeing with this process is the Iraqi people embracing American-style democracy.

At no time did I intend to, or do I believe that I did put forward false information to the American people.

It is possible to work across the aisle in Washington, but it's hard. And I think it's been made worse by the kind of 24-hour news cycle, the fact that everything is on TV before you can work things out quietly. I think it's the intensity of information that makes it feel more difficult to get things done. But I didn't leave with a bitter taste about the politics. The one thing that I would say is, I do think there is an unfortunate tendency to turn political differences, or policy differences, into critiques of one another's character or motives, and that's unfortunate.

The first step for a leader is to be right with yourself. Integrity is the basis of leadership.

It's bad policy to speculate on what you'll do if a plan fails when you're trying to make a plan work.

Separation of powers is a problem for foreign policy.