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

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

If Chinese exceptionalism represented the claims of a universal empire, Japanese exceptionalism sprang from the insecurities of an island nation borrowing heavily from its neighbor, but fearful of being dominated by it.

The issues are too important to be left for the voters.

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.

Those who stand for nothing fall for everything.

There is a universe behind and before him. And the day is approaching when closing the last book on the last shelf on the far left; he will say to himself, “now what?

People who know little are usually great talkers, while men who know much say little.

I learned very early the difference between knowing the name of something and knowing something.

I think it’s much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers which might be wrong.

Poets say science takes away from the beauty of the stars – mere globs of gas atoms. I, too, can see the stars on a desert night, and feel them. But do I see less or more?

Not a lot of people see that when you’re growing up. You don’t get to see that people really have to work hard to become as good as they are.

Is the glass half full, or half empty? It depends on whether you’re pouring, or drinking.