“Covert action should not be confused with missionary work.”

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

Americans hold that every problem has a solution; Chinese think that each solution is an admission ticket to a new set of problems.

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.

The reason that university politics is so vicious is because stakes are so small

The absence of alternatives clears the mind marvelously.

Americans have a tendency to believe that when there’s a problem there must be a solution.

For Roosevelt, if a nation was unable or unwilling to act to defend its own interests, it could not expect others to respect them. Inevitably,

If you don’t know where you are going, every road will get you nowhere.

Don’t be too ambitious. Do the most important thing you can think of doing every year and then your career will take care of itself.

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.

Inflation is not caused by the actions of private citizens, but by the government

We do not “come into” this world; we come out of it, as leaves from a tree. As the ocean “waves,” the universe “peoples.” Every individual is an expression of the whole realm of nature, a unique action of the total universe.

Take action in silence, No lion attacks in noise.

Taking action means saying ‘no’ to indifference. If there is a war to be waged, it is the war against the indifference which is eating away at our societies.

One day, we should have a book of clouds in action.

We can’t command our love, but we can our actions.

A moral being is one who is capable of reflecting on his past actions and their motives – of approving of some and disapproving of others.

If a man speak or act with a good thought, happiness follows him like a shadow that never leaves him.