If Poindexter made a comment to me like that, it would have been in the context of once the authorized program is approved there would be no point in having any of these private benefactors any longer.

If Poindexter made a comment to me like that, it would have been in the context of once the authorized program is approved there would be no point in having any of these private benefactors any longer.

I had no concerns - I had no reason to have concerns based on what was available to me about North's contacts with the private sector people, but I didn't think a CIA person should do it.

A wild and crazy weekend involves sitting on the front porch, smoking a cigar, reading a book.

Even when I was at CIA, I'd go to visit foreign leaders and I'd say, 'You know, I'm not a diplomat. I'm just an old CIA guy'... I said, 'If I wanted to be diplomatic, I'd have been a diplomat.'

Health care costs are eating the Defense Department alive.

I have tried to maintain civil relationships with everyone I meet - and, even if I violently disagree with them, try to be respectful.

I mean, when you get down to very low numbers of nuclear weapons, and you contemplate going to zero, how do you deal with the reality of that technology being available to almost any country that seeks to pursue it? And what conditions do you put in place?

I think that Iran with a nuclear weapon is extremely destabilizing. I think it could precipitate a nuclear arms race in the region.

I will always be an advocate in terms of wars of necessity. I am just much more cautious on wars of choice.

I'm a big advocate of drones.

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.

If there's ever an example that military power alone cannot be successful in Afghanistan, I think it was the Soviet experience.

Most governments lie to each other. That's the way business gets done.

No president is well-served by groupthink or by everybody singing from the same sheet of music they think he's on.

One of my favorite little sayings is, 'To avoid criticism, say nothing, do nothing, be nothing.'

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.

The United States has been a global power since late in the 19th century.

The reality is, the United States has global interests. Our defense budget is about the same as the defense budgets or military budgets of every other country in the world put together.

There is no international problem that can be addressed or solved without the engagement and leadership of the United States and everybody in the world knows that, its just fact of life. So sometimes I think we could conduct ourselves with a little more humility.

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.

Things have gotten so nasty in Washington.

Well, I've ruffled a few feathers at all the institutions I've led. But I think that's part of leadership.

Well, Israel, obviously, thinks of the Iranian nuclear program as an existential threat to Israel.

Well, what I've said is that the war in Iraq will always be clouded by how it began, which was a wrong premise, that there were in fact no weapons of nuclear - weapons of mass destruction.

When I was the director of Central Intelligence in the early '90s, I tried to get the Air Force to partner with us in building drones. And they didn't want to, because they had no pilots.

Is there discrimination against women? Yes. There's no denying that the old boys' network is alive and well. But there's also discrimination against men.

As the daughter of a 25-year veteran of the armed forces, I am incredibly thankful for the sacrifices our women and men have made in Iraq, and continue to make in Afghanistan.

I didn't find Jesus. He's been there the whole time.

Success-minded people make a decision to achieve a goal and never have to make that decision again.

I don't look at Instagram. I don't have much to do with social media.

Life externalizes at the level of our thought

E-mail has some magical ability to turn off the politeness gene in the human being.

One must maintain a little bit of summer even in the middle of winter.

But actually, I'm planning on moving to New York this year and I can tell you one reason why I think New York is incredible: I think things happen to you that you don't expect have happen to you.

My favorite thing about doing photo shoots is just being able to have fun, meeting new people, getting dressed up, and I just love doing it. So, I have a lot of fun.

What everyone loved about '24' is still there - the clock, the tick, the lean-in factor, the pacing.

I loved John Lennon. I read interviews, and whatever he said he liked, I would go and listen to them. That is what I want to do with my fans.

I do look for openings where I can overturn popular misconceptions, but unlike Christopher Hitchens, I am neither a contrarian nor a lone heretic. I like to have a significant number of academics watching my back.

Life is very, very short, and you can choose to live it how you want. You can choose to dumb yourself down and not express yourself just so you can fit in, just so people won't dislike you.

The United Nations has no business in our elections.

It's funny, the hardest thing to do is to make something look like it's fast, loose and improvised, and get somebody to laugh.

I am not a witch doctor, and in fact, you cannot have a witch doctor. You are either a witch or a doctor.

I am not a perfect servant. I am a public servant doing my best against the odds. As I develop and serve, be patient. God is not finished with me yet.

Breathless we flung us on a windy hill laughed in the sun and kissed the lovely grass.

Until justice is blind to color, until education is unaware of race, until opportunity is unconcerned with the color of men's skins, emancipation will be a proclamation but not a fact.

Excellence endures and sustains. It goes beyond motivation into the realms of inspiration.

The actual gap between Labor, Likud and the new central party is microscopic.