Quotes By Leon Panetta

The fundamental premise is that neither the United States or the international community is going to allow Iran to develop a nuclear weapon.

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

I'm not big on commissions.

Red lines are kind of political arguments that are used to try to put people in a corner.

Iran's continued drive to develop nuclear capabilities, including troubling enrichment activities and past work on weaponization documented by the IAEA, and its continued support to groups like Hezbollah, Hamas and other terrorist organizations make clear that the regime in Tehran is a very grave threat to all of us.

Well, the United States is a Pacific power. And we have always had a presence in the Pacific.

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.

If you're a terrorist, you're a terrorist.

In this century, the 21st century, the U.S. recognizes our prosperity and our security depends even more on the Asia-Pacific region.

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.

I mean, the Taliban, my view is that they have been weakened.

Frankly, my fundamental beliefs have not changed.

The United States was attacked on 9/11/12, and we know who attacked us.

I think soon after I became director of the CIA - President Obama pulled me into the Oval Office and said: 'Look, I just want you to know that your top priority is to go after Osama bin Laden.'

Today, I think the attitude is that governing is not necessarily good politics, and the result is that it's much more partisan and much more divided.

I know that young people sometimes, caught up in the moment, make some very foolish decisions.

The United States, and the president's made this clear, does not want Iran to develop a nuclear weapon. That's a red line for us. And it's a red line obviously for the Israelis so we share a common goal here.

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

When you cut a half-a-trillion dollars from the defense budget, it affects almost every area in the defense budget.

I don't usually comment on columnists' ideas of what I'm thinking. That's a dangerous game to get into.

Rather than undermining the Palestinian Authority, it is in Israel's interests to strengthen it by... continuing to transfer Palestinian tax revenues and pursuing other avenues of cooperation.

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.

These days, it takes only seconds - seconds - for a picture, a photo, to suddenly become an international headline.

Well look, CIA is an agency that has to collect intelligence, do operations. We have to take risks and it's important that we take risks and that we know that we have the support of the government and we have the support of the American people in what we're doing.

Rising sea levels, severe draughts, the melting of the polar caps, the more frequent and devastating natural disasters all raise demand for humanitarian assistance and disaster relief.

Well, you know, any defense force worth its salt has to be able to deal with uncertainty, has to be able to deal with events that we may not have planned for.

I mean, the Taliban, my view is that they have been weakened. We have not seen them able to conduct any kind of organized attack to regain any territory that they've lost. We've seen levels of violence going down.

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

One demonstration of extremists, any more than a Ku Klux Klan demonstration in the United States, is not necessarily reflective of what the rest of the country feels.

An aggressor nation or extremist group could gain control of critical switches and derail passenger trains, or trains loaded with lethal chemicals.