Leon Panetta People Quotations

People start doing it by the numbers. They don't have that kind of excitement you had in the first term, dealing with issues, dealing with the country,

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

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

It doesn't make a lot of sense for us to borrow money from the Chinese to go give to another country for humanitarian aid. We ought to get the Chinese to take care of the people.

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

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

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.

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

I think the most important thing for this president to do is to focus on trying to get some things done -- limited things done -- over these next 100 days, ... If he can get education reform accomplished, if he could do something on campaign reform in a bipartisan way, then that could send a very important signal to the American people that he's going to try to get things done.