Young men often seek tests and trials, and to me, BUD/S training - basic underwater demolition/SEAL - seemed like the ultimate test.

Every entrepreneur has to deal with hardship, but if we're tough enough and thoughtful enough, we can find a way to make hard things make us better.

I believe that you have to live a life that involves both courage and compassion.

It's very important for us as a group of Navy SEALs, to make sure that the message that we send to the country is that we're ready to serve any commander in chief, the elected head of the armed forces, that the people of the United States elect. That is our mission, that's our duty, as Navy SEALs.

The more successful Navy SEALs there are, the more glory it reflects on the community and the better it is for our country.

People know if you care about them. How do you show people that you care? By caring for them. By putting their needs first. By sacrificing for them. By serving them. Do that, and you'll build a great team.

So Hell Week is considered to be the hardest week of the hardest military training in the world. It is a week of continuous military training during which most classes sleep for a total of two to five hours over the course of the entire week.

Tort reform is important. We need to prevent trial lawyers from killing good jobs.

The mistake that I made was that I was engaged in a consensual relationship with a woman who was not my wife. That is a mistake for which I am very sorry.

I'm very confident that God has a way of bringing good from difficulty.

One of the things that I've found in everything that I've done: People want leaders to create a sense of direction and to lead and to act.

I read Mitch Daniels's book, 'Keeping the Republic,' several times.

My parents were both Democrats and I grew up as a Democrat. Basically I was told that the Democrats were the party that cared about people. I liked people and I cared about them, so I was a Democrat.

If you care about people, then you're willing to act not just with compassion, but you're also willing to act with courage.

I am a conservative Republican, but I didn't start out that way. I was raised as a Democrat.

I became a conservative because I believe that caring for people means more than just spending taxpayer money; it means delivering results. It means respecting and challenging our citizens, telling them what they need to hear, not simply what they want to hear.

Success means eliminating Al Qaeda's ability to launch terrorist attacks against the United States and our allies.

Defeating a terrorist organization is like fighting a forest fire; there's never a clear moment of victory, and even after you've won, you have to watch carefully.

Since Bin Laden's death, many Americans have decided that our job in Afghanistan is done. They see a victory in the counterterrorism campaign, and are tired of the corruption, confusion and dysfunction of the nation-building campaign.

I first started doing service, actually, as a kid, doing service projects. Later in college, I started doing international humanitarian work that brought me to places like Bosnia, Rwanda.

It's only in the act of pushing yourself, challenging yourself to make a contribution to your community, to your family, to your country, that you actually realize your full self, you know?

It's really important to have role models, and a lot of the ancients always talked about this. Seneca talked about this, Aristotle talked about this, and in fact, this was my boxing coach's philosophy in college, was that you have to have role models.

In any leadership, whenever you're facing a tough challenge, find ways to bring people together and get them to serve together.

I did a lot of humanitarian work before I joined the military.

I'd finished a dissertation, writing about how international humanitarian organizations worked with kids in war zones and then I made this transition from the academic world to officer candidate school and to the SEAL teams. It was one of the best decisions I ever made in my life.

I had a great time at Oxford, got a wonderful, wonderful education there.

The people who believe in voter intimidation believe that the minute you make a political donation, that you immediately need to turn all your information over to the government.

We've already seen other candidates set up these secretive super PACs where they don't take any responsibility for what they're funding... because that's how the game has always been played. I've been very proud to tell people, 'I'm stepping forward, and you can see every single one of our donors.'

I'm not after anything, I don't want to be part of politics, I don't want to be a part of anything.

It's oftentimes the case that relief workers, people who've been involved in development projects and foreign assistance, have a real understanding of foreign cultures that the military desperately needs if we're going to be able to work effectively.

I was at this dinner for Rhodes Scholars. And we were in the Rhodes mansion, which is this fancy mansion on the Oxford campus. And I remember I looked up in the rotunda, and I saw that etched into the marble were the names of Rhodes Scholars who had left Oxford, and had fought and died in World War II.

Part of the attraction of the SEAL teams was the incredible tests that it offered.

What happens for a lot of veterans when they come home, especially when they get back to their community is that they can go to a very tough and hard place and they start to wonder, 'What's next for me?' and they ask themselves, 'Why did this happen to me?'

Every generation of Americans who has fought, every generation of Americans who has served, has suffered.

When we make these decisions that we're going to commit ourselves to making a difference in the life of one person every single day, what happens is we actually build a whole generation of citizen leaders.

People understand the tremendous sacrifices that veterans have made - and they instinctively want to do something for them. And that sometimes leads people to give veterans an excuse: Oh, you didn't show up for work on time. It must be that you have posttraumatic stress disorder. Oh, you're disabled. Don't even try.

The more I thought about myself, the weaker I got. The more I recognized that I was serving a purpose larger than myself, the stronger I got.

I don't think many people want to say to themselves that they've quit. At the same time, we've all failed in our lives, we've all failed at different things in different ways and I think there's a lot to be said about facing that failure squarely.

I've never been in politics before, but even in the brief time that I've been running for governor, I've been exposed to some of the worst people I've ever known. Liars, cowards, sociopaths.

I'm proud that many of Missouri's lawmakers stood strong to protect the lives of the innocent unborn and women's health.

The best way to honor the legacy of a person who's passed is to find a way to support the living.

I'm proud to be Jewish.

There is no room for anti-Semitism in the Republican Party, and the leaders need to show that.

It certainly could be that there are prejudices around. I can only speak to what I have lived, and I have experienced that people have been incredibly welcoming to me as a Jewish Republican.

What matters is what you do. And this runs counter to what a lot of the culture teaches people about putting feelings first. By contrast, resilient people focus not on what they intend, but on what they achieve.

Before I became a SEAL, I'd done humanitarian work around the world - with refugee families in Bosnia, with unaccompanied children in Rwanda, with kids who lost limbs to land mines in Cambodia.

One of the great things about the SEAL teams in particular, and the American military in general, is the tremendous diversity of backgrounds and experience that people bring to their service.

The U.S. military may well be the best-integrated large institution on the planet. You have people from every corner of the country, every ethnic background, every walk of life, and we all come together to serve.

Everyone needs resilience. It's a virtue essential to growth and essential to happiness.

Right to work doesn't eliminate unions. It makes them more responsible and accountable to their members on the front lines.