Quotes

[about the late Swedish Foreign Minister, Anna Lindh] There are three things I like about Sweden: ABBA, Volvo and Anna!

Avoid having your ego so close to your position that when your position falls, your ego goes with it.

[in response to Harry Belafonte's "house slave" remark about him] If Harry had wanted to attack my politics, that was fine. If he wanted to attack a particular position I hold, that was fine. But to use a slave reference, I think, is unfortunate and is a throwback to another time and another place that I wish Harry had thought twice about using.

[regarding the notorious prison at the US Navy's Guantanamo Bay base in Cuba set up by the George W. Bush administration to hold suspects accused of terrorist activities without trial or charges] If it was up to me, I would close Guantanamo not tomorrow but this afternoon.

[2/24/01, in Cairo, Egypt] He [Saddam Hussein] has not developed any significant capability with respect to weapons of mass destruction. He is unable to project conventional power against his neighbors.

We need people who know how the system runs, but it really is not necessary to stay there for an entire career. When I was made a three-star general, I was congratulated and told, "Two years from now to the day, if we haven't given you another job or promotion we expect your resignation on our desk". That's not bad.

There are no secrets to success. It is the result of preparation, hard work, and learning from failure.

The "I Have a Dream" speech [given by civil rights leader Martin Luther King] held up a mirror for all Americans to look deeply into the spirit and soul of our country. The "Dream" speech, along with the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act that followed, finally broke the bonds of segregation and Jim Crow that had imprisoned our finest dreams. Not only were African-Americans given a berth of freedom, but white America had a horrible burden removed from its back. Fifty years later, we have seen great progress. But we are not yet where we need to be. Education, jobs, health care and good housing for all Americans must remain our goal. We all must work together if Dr. King's dream is to be fully realized.

[2011, on the killing of Osama Bin Laden] Osama bin Laden is dead and buried at sea. Justice has been done. His death brings a sense of relief to the families of 911 and the families of all those brave America troops who have fought this war over the past ten years.

[on what he was doing on September 11th, 2001]: I was in Lima, Peru. And I was having breakfast with the president in Peru, Alejandro Toledo. And we were talking about textile quotas. He wanted greater access for Peruvian cotton, high-quality Peruvian cotton, to come into the country. And suddenly the notes started being passed in to me that something had happened. And the first note said a plane had gone into the tower. It sounded odd, but things like that have happened before. And I was just rolling it around in my mind when the second note came in and said the other tower had been hit. And then I instantly knew what it was and I had to get home. And so it was a long ride home, an eight-hour flight home, with very little communications, and trying to understand what we would be faced with and what I would be faced with and the department would be faced with when I got home.