“History knows no resting places and no plateaus”

I am being frank about myself in this book. I tell of my first mistake on page 850.

The Art of War articulates a doctrine less of territorial conquest than of psychological dominance; it was the way the North Vietnamese fought America.

It’s a pity both sides can’t lose (commenting on Iran-Iraq war, 1980 – 1988)

Intellectuals analyze the operations of international systems; statesmen build them.

Policy is the art of the possible, the science of the relative.

The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a little longer.

Since Peter the Great, Russia had been expanding at the rate of one Belgium per year.

It is not a matter of what is true that counts, but a matter of what is perceived to be true.

The Soviet Union would never be bound by agreements, Deng warned; it understood only the language of countervailing force.

The nice thing about being a celebrity is that if you bore people they think it’s their fault.

The war is just when the intention that causes it to be undertaken is just. The will is therefore the principle element that must be considered, not the means, He who intends to kill the guilty sometimes faultlessly shed the blood of the innocents

The art of crisis management is to raise the stakes to where the adversary will not follow, but in a manner that avoids a tit for tat.

In short, the end justifies the means.

Postcolonial countries. All have sought to overcome the legacy of colonial.

Woe to the statesman whose arguments for entering a war are not as convincing at its end as they were at the beginning, Bismarck had cautioned.

Poor old Germany. Too big for Europe, too small for the world

For nations, history plays the role that character confers on human beings.

The history of free men is never written by chance but by choice – their choice.

We used to root for the Indians against the cavalry because we didn’t think it was fair in the history books that when the cavalry won it was a great victory, and when the Indians won it was a massacre.

If history teaches anything it is that there can be no peace without equilibrium and no justice without restraint.

History teaches that, when powerful despots can gain something through aggression, they try, by the same methods, to gain more and more and more.

History is written by the winners.

The arts are not just a nice thing to have or to do if there is free time or if one can afford it. Rather, paintings and poetry, music and fashion, design and dialogue, they all define who we are as a people and provide an account of our history for the next generation.

Trump is the first anti-democratic president in modern U.S. history.