“Order always requires a subtle balance of restraint, force, and legitimacy.”

A diamond is a chunk of coal that did well under pressure.

I want to thank you for stopping the applause. It is impossible for me to look humble for any period of time.

A more immediate issue concerns North Korea, to which Bismarck’s nineteenth-century aphorism surely applies: We live in a wondrous time, in which the strong is weak because of his scruples and the weak grows strong because of his audacity.

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

Each success only buys an admission ticket to a more difficult problem.

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

Our fears find us and force us to confront them over and over again.

A mind at peace, a mind centered and not focused on harming others, is stronger than any physical force in the universe.

The only watchmaker is the blind forces of physics.

The time when you should most of all withdraw into yourself is when you are forced to be in a crowd.

Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where any one class is made to feel that society is an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob and degrade them, neither persons nor property will be safe.

You may force me to say what you wish; you may revile me for saying what I do. But it moves.

Forces beyond your control can take away everything you possess except one thing, your freedom to choose how you will respond to the situation.

When you are failing, you are forced to be creative, to dig deep and think, night and day.