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.

I think it's obvious that democracy is something that is contagious, and it always has been.

It took me realizing that a broken heart has never actually killed anyone to find the courage to ask for what I want, in just about every situation. That was part of my own growing up.

I generally don't follow domestic news that much aside from how it relates to the stories I'm covering abroad, like what Americans think of the War in Afghanistan.