The purpose of terrorism is to terrorize. It's to change the behavior of the people that are being terrorized.

If you foul up, tell the President and correct it fast. Delay only compounds mistakes.

When cutting staff at the Pentagon, don't eliminate the thin layer that assures civilian control.

A few. . . critics are the only people I ever heard use the phrase 'imminent threat.' I didn't, the president didn't.

Watch the growth of middle level management. Don't automatically fill vacant jobs. Leave some positions unfilled for 6-8 months to see what happens. You will find you won't need to fill some of them.

I think all of us have a sense if we imagine the kind of world we would face if the people who bombed the mess hall in Mosul, or the people who did the bombing in Spain, or the people who attacked the United States in New York, shot down the plane over Pennsylvania and attacked the Pentagon, the people who cut off peoples' heads on television to intimidate, to frighten indeed the word 'terrorized' is just that. Its purpose is to terrorize, to alter behavior, to make people be something other than that which they want to be.

Don't think of yourself as indispensable or infallible. As Charles De Gaulle said, the cemeteries of the world are full of indispensable men.