“In effect, none of the most important countries which must build a new world order have had any experience with the multi-state system that is emerging. Never before has a new world order had to be assembled from so many different perceptions, or on so global a scale.”

In the end, peace can be achieved only by hegemony or by balance of power.

Yet freedom cannot be secured or sustained without a framework of order to keep the peace.

It has the added advantage of being true.

Power without legitimacy tempts tests of strength; legitimacy without power tempts empty posturing.

Every victory is only the price of admission to a more difficult problem

A leader does not deserve the name unless he is willing occasionally to stand alone.

Chinese thinkers developed strategic thought that placed a premium on victory through psychological advantage and preached the avoidance of direct conflict.

The state is a fragile organization, and the statesman does not have the moral right to risk its survival on ethical restraint.

Self-governed nations do not fill their neighbor states with spies.

For the balance of power is never static; its components are in constant flux.

America has no permanent friends or enemies, only interests

Blessed are the people whose leaders can look destiny in the eye without flinching but also without attempting to play God

History is the memory of States.

In his essay, ‘Perpetual Peace,’ the philosopher, Immanuel Kant, argued that perpetual peace would eventually come to the world in one of two ways, by human insight or by conflicts and catastrophes of a magnitude that left humanity no other choice. We are at such a juncture.

Nobody will ever win the battle of the sexes. There is too much fraternizing with the enemy.

When statesmen want to gain time, they offer to talk.

I felt that I had to write. Even if I had never been published, I knew that I would go on writing, enjoying it and experiencing the challenge.

Your ultimate life experience and legacy is being built moment by moment, day by day. Your story is being crafted by your every action, all leading somewhere, all leading to what one hopes will be a magnificent crescendo.

Let go of the battle. Breathe quietly and let it be. Let your body relax and your heart soften. Open to whatever you experience without fighting.

No matter what you are experiencing in life right now, trust that all is unfolding in your best interests.

I started writing poetry when I was six. I had this teacher who didn’t believe the poems I’d bring in were mine because they were dark and sad. But I wrote about what I experienced in my childhood.

I think I had actually served my apprenticeship as a writer of fiction by writing all those songs. I had already been through phases of autobiographical or experimental stuff.

It is not easy to convey, unless one has experienced it, the dramatic feeling of sudden enlightenment that floods the mind when the right idea finally clinches into place.

My experience of singing, as an actor, was that there’s a different creative feeling of freedom. The acting thing is a bit more defined and cerebral. I can see why people would want to cross over. If you have so much freedom on stage then perhaps you want to be confined a bit, and vice versa.