Top 50 Leon Panetta Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “I’m going to give people the benefit of the doubt.”

— Leon Panetta

2. “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.”

— Leon Panetta

3. “Russians understand strength, and if they feel that their opponents are weak, they will take advantage of it.”

— Leon Panetta

4. “I don’t think I should penalize people who were doing their duty.”

— Leon Panetta

5. “If you’re a terrorist, you’re a terrorist.”

— Leon Panetta

6. “The president is out there today trying to talk about health care, and the reality is nobody cares about what he’s saying on health care because this news is consuming everything. No president could tolerate that or should tolerate it.”

— Leon Panetta

7. “My whole life has been dedicated to public service.”

— Leon Panetta

8. “After every major conflict – World War I, World War II, Korea, Vietnam, the fall of the Soviet Union – what happened was that we ultimately hollowed out the force, largely by doing deep across-the-board cuts.”

— Leon Panetta

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

— Leon Panetta

10. “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.”

— Leon Panetta

11. “I think the primary message to the world is that the United States is going to remain the strongest military power in the world.”

— Leon Panetta

12. “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.”

— Leon Panetta

13. “The political and substantive reality is that the agenda has to change. I don’t think they have any choice.”

— Leon Panetta

14. “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.”

— Leon Panetta

15. “If we don’t do something to simplify the tax system, we’re going to end up with a national police force of internal revenue agents.”

— Leon Panetta

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

— Leon Panetta

17. “Iran is isolating itself from the rest of the world.”

— Leon Panetta

18. “Clearly, Russia has lied to the world about what’s going on in Ukraine. They have clearly violated the cease-fire agreements.”

— Leon Panetta

19. “The reality is that the United States military alone cannot be all things to all nations. We will sharpen the application of our resources, better deploy our forces in the world and share our burdens more and more effectively with our partners. And frankly, all our allies need to do the same.”

— Leon Panetta

20. “These days, it takes only seconds – seconds – for a picture, a photo, to suddenly become an international headline.”

— Leon Panetta

21. “The area of climate change has a dramatic impact on national security.”

— Leon Panetta

22. “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.”

— Leon Panetta

23. “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.”

— Leon Panetta

24. “There’s no question that the main location of Al Qaida is in tribal areas of Pakistan.”

— Leon Panetta

25. “I don’t engage in hypotheticals.”

— Leon Panetta

26. “We are a nation at war. This is also a time for hard choices. It’s about ensuring that we are able to prevail in the conflicts in which we are now engaged. But it’s also about being able to be strong and disciplined in applying our nation’s limited resources to defending America.”

— Leon Panetta

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

— Leon Panetta

28. “I want you and the people of Israel to know a few things that have not and will not change. The United States stands firmly with Israel, and we have a rock solid commitment to the security of Israel and to the security of its citizens.”

— Leon Panetta

29. “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.”

— Leon Panetta

30. “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.”

— Leon Panetta

31. “The most important thing we can do is prosecute the offenders, deal with those that have broken the law and committed this crime. And if we can do that then we can begin to deal with this issue and send a signal this is not a problem that we are going to ignore in the United States military.”

— Leon Panetta

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

— Leon Panetta

33. “Frankly, my fundamental beliefs have not changed.”

— Leon Panetta

34. “My impression is that Putin feels that he can basically manipulate the West to do what he ultimately wants to achieve, and that he feels he’s gotten away with it so far, and that all he has to do is basically play the same game.”

— Leon Panetta

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

— Leon Panetta

36. “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.”

— Leon Panetta

37. “When you’re smaller and leaner, you’re not going to have that large a presence throughout the world.”

— Leon Panetta

38. “Obama really does recognize the threats that are out there; I think he understands the world. He understands the role of America in that troubled world.”

— Leon Panetta

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

— Leon Panetta

40. “China is a major power in the Pacific and I think we are dealing with some common threats in that region: the whole issue of Korea and the stability of Korea, the whole issue of nuclear proliferation, the whole issue of providing free access to our ships that are operating in that area.”

— Leon Panetta

41. “The consequence could be that we would have an escalation that would take place that would not only involve many lives, but I think it could consume the Middle East in a confrontation and a conflict that we would regret.”

— Leon Panetta

42. “The United States will do whatever we have to do to protect our forces.”

— Leon Panetta

43. “Caution is an important quality in a leader, but it has to be caution followed by decision. Caution followed by ambivalence can be a weakness.”

— Leon Panetta

44. “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.”

— Leon Panetta

45. “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.”

— Leon Panetta

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

— Leon Panetta

47. “Throughout the 40 years I’ve been in Washington, I’ve always worked hard, particularly with regards to the budget issues.”

— Leon Panetta

48. “My father said I was perfectly suited for Washington because I’ve always worked around nuts.”

— Leon Panetta

49. “The United States is going to defend itself under any circumstances.”

— Leon Panetta

50. “The Taliban is resilient.”

— Leon Panetta