During an interview with ABC News, former President Bill Clinton was asked by "This Week" anchor George Stephanopoulos about the biggest lesson he learned from the 2008 presidential campaign, in which his wife, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton lost the Democratic presidential primary to then Sen. Barack Obama who ultimately defeated former Republican Gov. Mitt Romney to win the general election.

Below are excerpts from what Clinton told Stephanopoulos during their interview, which taped Thursday in New York during the Clinton Global Initiative.

1) "You've got to have a plan for the future that relates to the people. You know, this is not about the candidates as much as about having a plan for the future."

2) "You have to have a strategy for presenting your true self to the voters in an environment where there are unprecedented opportunities for those who don't want you to win to paint a different picture of your true self."

3) "Big data helps, it really matters. And you have to merge high-tech with grassroots. "

4) "I still think we have way too many caucuses. They're not democratic. And unlike primaries, they have no legal enforcement. You can break the rules, nobody's going to say anything. I think there are way too many of them."

5) "And we have learned that it's a strategy in modern life to make- do reverse plastic surgery on people, so that people don't really know who you are."

Toward the end of the conversation, Clinton added the following:

"You must learn the lessons of your mistakes and your failures without becoming a general who fights the last war, because every new encounter will be shaped by different forces."

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