Quotes By Leon Panetta

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

Companies should be able to share specific threat information with the government without the prospect of lawsuits hanging over their head.

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.

My whole life has been dedicated to public service.

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.

Iran is isolating itself from the rest of the world.

I think what both Republicans and Democrats need to do and the leaders on both sides is to recognize that if sequester takes place, it would be disastrous for our national defense and very frankly for a lot of very important domestic programs. They have a responsibility to come together, find the money necessary to de-trigger sequester.

I don't think I should penalize people who were doing their duty.

You know, one thing I've learned over 40 years is that when you have jobs in Washington, you do it day by day and that's what I'm doing as secretary of defense.

Sexual assault has no place in the military. It is a violation of everything that the U.S. military stands for.

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

Unfortunately these days, there is a hell of a lot that keeps me awake.

Al Qaeda still remains a threat.

I suddenly realized at the CIA that I had to make life-and-death decisions about people.

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

You don't deploy forces into harm's way without knowing what's going on.

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.

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.

We either believe in the dignity of the individual, the rule of law, and the prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment, or we don't. There is no middle ground.

There's no question that the main location of Al Qaida is in tribal areas of Pakistan.

The Taliban is resilient.

I don't think there's any question that America is safer as a result of the bin Laden operation.

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.

If the Iraqis fail to implement the reforms, if they fail to get a handle on the violence, there's nothing the United States can do, militarily or otherwise, that can solve those problems. They have to assume the primary responsibility to govern themselves.

I don't engage in hypotheticals.

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 United States is going to defend itself under any circumstances.

When you're smaller and leaner, you're not going to have that large a presence throughout the world.