“A country that demands moral perfection in its foreign policy will achieve neither perfection nor security”

in international affairs a reputation for reliability is a more important asset than demonstrations of tactical cleverness.

To undertake a journey on a road never before traveled requires character and courage: character because the choice is not obvious; courage because the road will be lonely at first. And the statesman must then inspire his people to persist in the endeavor.

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.

The world is a possibility if only you’ll discover it.

I think God rarely gives to one man, or one set of men, more than one great moral victory to win.

The great majority of women are more intelligent, better educated, and far more moral than multitudes of men whose right to vote no man questions.

I have no idea of submitting tamely to injustice inflicted either on me or on the slave. I will oppose it with all the moral powers with which I am endowed. I am no advocate of passivity.

Genius in general is poetic. Where genius has been active it has been poetically active. The truly moral person is a poet.

If I were a man, I would strenuously object to the assumption that women have any moral or spiritual superiority as a class.

The ideal of morality has no more dangerous rival than the ideal of highest strength, of most powerful life. It is the maximum of the savage.

Physical beauty is the sign of an interior beauty, a spiritual and moral beauty which is the basis, the principle, and the unity of the beautiful.