“The magic of America is that we’re a free and open society with a mixed population. Part of our security is our freedom.”

Painful the grounds for resentment, the easier it is for a Fascist leader to gain followers by dangling the prospect of renewal or by vowing to take back what has been stolen.

For the DPRK and its military, the ouster of Saddam Hussein conveyed a powerful message: it’s not enough to pretend to have weapons of mass destruction. To be secure, a nation must build them, own them, and hide them.

Among those welcoming Fascism and shouting Viva Mussolini that day were two hundred Jews.

There are a lot of similar aspects in all the religions. The question is which side of it you hold up.

To put it mildly, the world is a mess.

I have said this many times, that there seems to be enough room in the world for mediocre men, but not for mediocre women, and we really have to work very, very hard.

I am not a fatalist. I have just been reading War and Peace and Tolstoy is such a fatalist. I think people can make a difference, I am an optimist who worries a lot.

The voice and force of the United States may count for nothing if they are withheld too long.

Whatever the job you are asked to do at whatever level, do a good job because your reputation is your resume.

Wilson’s doctrine of self-determination gave a boost to the idea that wherever there dwelled a people, there should be a state.

I think that a president needs to have a variety of views presented. But also, there has to be a team effort, because otherwise, I think it creates a dissonance and difficulty.

While democracy in the long run is the most stable form of government, in the short run, it is among the most fragile.

I do not believe that things happen accidentally; I believe you earn them.

To reduce the sum of our existence to a competitive struggle for advantage among more than two hundred nations is not clear-eyed but myopic. People and nations compete, but that is not all that they do.

Good guys don’t always win, especially when they are divided and less determined than their adversaries.

The main thing is to remain oneself, under any circumstances; that was and is our common purpose.

To my mind, there is a solution which has to do with democracy, because democratic governments are subject to the will of the people. So, if the people will it, you can actually create international institutions through the democratic states.

The real safeguard of democracy is education.

Campaign promises are – by long democratic tradition – the least binding form of human commitment.

All democracies turn into dictatorships – but not by coup. The people give their democracy to a dictator, whether it’s Julius Caesar or Napoleon or Adolf Hitler. Ultimately, the general population goes along with the idea.

The virtue of a democratic system with a [constitutionally guaranteed right to free speech] is that it readily enables the people, over time, to be persuaded that what they took for granted is not so, and to change their laws accordingly.

If we care about universal principles such as freedom, democracy and the rule of law, we cannot leave them to the care of market forces; we must establish some other institutions to safeguard them.

[If critics of the Pledge of Allegiance persuaded the public it should be changed] then we could eliminate under God from the Pledge of Allegiance, that could be democratically done.

Democracy without God is mans worship and elevation of himself and his own intelligence or humanism, where man becomes his own measure for morality, judgment, and justice.