The average voter out there understands that the next president is going to have to be prepared to immediately step in without hesitation and end our involvement in Iraq. It's very difficult to figure out how to move on to broader foreign policy concerns without fixing Iraq first.

We need to aggressively take on radical Islamic terrorism but not at the expense of our American values.

There's one advantage in having been around as long as I have. Everybody in the Senate knows me, and - I'm going to say something presumptuous, to repeat myself - I think most respect me.

No public funding for abortion; it imposes a view.

Resist the temptation to ascribe motive, because you really don't know - and it gets in the way of being able to reach a consensus on things that matter to you and to many other people.

I did not know at the time, but what I did at that swimming pool [on the east side of Wilmington] paved the way for Barack Obama.

The idea that you know more than the intelligence community knows, it's a little like saying, I know more about physics than my professor.