Leon Panetta Quotes

When you're smaller and leaner, you're not going to have that large a presence throughout the world.

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

We are a nation at war. This is also a time for hard choices. It's about ensuring that we are able to prevail in the conflicts in which we are now engaged. But it's also about being able to be strong and disciplined in applying our nation's limited resources to defending America.

The potential for the next Pearl Harbor could very well be a cyber-attack.

We either believe in the dignity of the individual, the rule of law, and the prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment, or we don't. There is no middle ground.

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

My impression is that Putin feels that he can basically manipulate the West to do what he ultimately wants to achieve, and that he feels he's gotten away with it so far, and that all he has to do is basically play the same game.

I want you and the people of Israel to know a few things that have not and will not change. The United States stands firmly with Israel, and we have a rock solid commitment to the security of Israel and to the security of its citizens.

The reason we've always had a civilian in that job [Secretary of Defence] is because we really believe that it is policymakers who ought to control the military and not have the military control the military.

The consequence could be that we would have an escalation that would take place that would not only involve many lives, but I think it could consume the Middle East in a confrontation and a conflict that we would regret.

If we don't do something to simplify the tax system, we're going to end up with a national police force of internal revenue agents.

You know, as director of the CIA, I got an awful lot of intelligence about all the horrible things that could go on across the world.

My father said I was perfectly suited for Washington because I've always worked around nuts.

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.

I think the primary message to the world is that the United States is going to remain the strongest military power in the world.

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.

The White House was so eager to rid itself of Iraq that it was willing to withdraw rather than lock in arrangements that would preserve our influence and interests.

The last thing I want to do is to make the mistakes of the past.

Sexual assault has no place in the military. It is a violation of everything that the US military stands for.

The United States is going to defend itself under any circumstances.

I'm going to give people the benefit of the doubt.

In the zero-sum budget game, every dollar spent on this problem [illegal immigration] must be taken from somewhere else....No, we should not tolerate people immigrating illegally. But we need to treat this issue honestly and fairly.

You don't deploy forces into harm's way without knowing what's going on.

The United States has to have the capability to deal with more than one enemy at one time and be able to confront them and win.

After every major conflict - World War I, World War II, Korea, Vietnam, the fall of the Soviet Union - what happened was that we ultimately hollowed out the force, largely by doing deep across-the-board cuts.