In this century, the 21st century, the U.S. recognizes our prosperity and our security depends even more on the Asia-Pacific region.

One of the principal qualities that you need as national security adviser is trust, the trust of the president. And that depends on truth and it depends on honesty.

Go forward, knowing that you are greater than the challenges of your time.

Winning in Afghanistan is having a country that is stable enough to ensure that there is no safe haven for Al Qaida or for a militant Taliban that welcomes Al Qaida. That's really the measure of success for the United States.

The United States has to be a leader in the world, because the problem is: If we are not leading, nobody else will.

I suddenly realized at the CIA that I had to make life-and-death decisions about people.

These days, it takes only seconds - seconds - for a picture, a photo, to suddenly become an international headline.