There's a lot of books out there about how you lead change in business, but I've certainly not seen any... on how you do that in public institutions.
I've seen, all too often in my career, people coming in to lead agencies and organizations and trying to impose change from the top down. Never works. You never have enough time.
I've spent my entire adult life with the United States as a superpower and one that had no compunction about spending what it took to sustain that position. And it didn't have to look over its shoulder because our economy was so strong.
Things have gotten so nasty in Washington.
I have tried to maintain civil relationships with everyone I meet - and, even if I violently disagree with them, try to be respectful.
If there's ever an example that military power alone cannot be successful in Afghanistan, I think it was the Soviet experience.
One of the big changes in the Congress since I first came to Washington is that all of these folks go home every weekend. They used to play golf together; their families got to know each other, go to dinner at each other's homes at weekends - and these would be people who were political adversaries.
I consider myself a Republican.
Defense is not like other discretionary spending.
I have instincts.
I don't think any president that I worked with has ever said 'pretty please.'
I have always voted for who I believed was the best person.
I read in the press, and therefore it must be true, that no secretary of defense had ever been quoted as arguing for a bigger budget for State.
You know, if I were an - if I were a Taliban, I'd say, 'What did al-Qaida ever do for me except get me kicked out of Afghanistan?'
I have always that there ought to be some kind of mandatory national service, not necessarily in the military but to show everybody that freedom isn't free, that everybody has an obligation to the nation as a community.
I've been very sensitive for a long time to the repeated pattern, during economic hard times or after a war, of the United States' essentially unilaterally disarming.
I had no difficulty as Secretary of Defense moving from the Bush administration to the Obama administration.
I wish I could set deadlines for the Congress, but that's just not the way the Constitution is written.
Some people have said, in so many words, that I'm kind of wooly-headed in believing that the Iranians would see not having nuclear weapons as more in their security interest than not.
