The long experiment with professional politicians and professional government is over, and it failed.

I think that Donald Trump is very concerned about finding the right way to be effective in a responsible way. And he wants to be effective.

Now, we don't get rid of it in round one because we don't think that that's politically smart, and we don't think that's the right way to go through a transition. But we believe it's going to wither on the vine because we think people are voluntarily going to leave it - voluntarily.

There’s a large part of me that’s four years old. I wake up in the morning and I know that somewhere there’s a cookie. I don’t know where it is but I know it’s mine and I have to go find it. That’s how I live my life. My life is amazingly filled with fun.

Press plays "gotcha"; limit press briefings.

I think Putin has already gotten used to the idea of Obama and his secretary of state, John Kerry, making noise - it just doesn't seem to impress Moscow at all.

Being Americans, we prosecute wars to win them, not to have reasonable response, not to have appropriate levels of retaliation. Our theory is you start bombing our cities; we're going to defeat you and make it impossible.