America is not an ethnostate. We are not rooted in blood and soil.

[Russians would like to] undermine the West and its institutions, create doubts about NATO, create doubts about the European Union, support nationalists on the right just as the Soviet communists supported communists on the left. Weaken the West in general and create an atmosphere in which we`re uncertain about ourselves.

Lincoln is quoted more often than he's understood, and he understood that the founding principle of our nation is, in fact, the Declaration of Independence.

Realism is important in foreign policy. You have to be realistic about what you can achieve, and about the pitfalls, and problems along the way, of which there are plenty. Nothing is easy. It's always rough.

Putinsim is not necessarily the end state for Russia. Russia has moved in many directions since the early 1980s.

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

There are a lot of policies that don't work out that are nevertheless worth doing.