The Civil War was fought, in a sense, over whether that sentence - all men are created equal - is to be taken literally. And the southerners in the 1850s argued that it was not.

Both the Bush people and [Barack] Obama people had no problem working with the holdovers. They weren`t out to get them.

In my view, [Vladimir] Putin despises the West in general and the United States in particular, both for who we are, our liberal values, and for what we`ve done, which is to take down the Soviet Empire.

Nationalism is like cheap alcohol. First it makes you drunk, then it makes you blind, then it kills you.

Partisanship is not part of my professional makeup.

There are lots of secretaries who send off special envoys and yes, say, "Do a great job," and that's fine until it costs you something. And then they cut you off.

I think the West is in a low point we haven`t seen since the 1930s.