Chuck Hagel

Alliances and international organizations should be understood as opportunities for leadership and a means to expand our influence, not as constraints on our power.

Foreign policy will require a strategic agility that, whenever possible, gets ahead of problems, strengthens U.S. security and alliances, and promotes American interests and credibility.

Bogging down large armies in historically complex, dangerous areas ends in disaster.

Although I write to entertain, and try to keep my work free of didacticism, I do have a rather passionate belief in our need to be connected to - and to learn from - history.

We define ourselves as intelligent. That's odd, because we're doing the definition - We're creating our own definition and saying, 'We are intelligent!'