“The Soviet Union would never be bound by agreements, Deng warned; it understood only the language of countervailing force.”

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

America has no permanent friends or enemies, only interests

Blessed are the people whose leaders can look destiny in the eye without flinching but also without attempting to play God

History is the memory of States.

In his essay, ‘Perpetual Peace,’ the philosopher, Immanuel Kant, argued that perpetual peace would eventually come to the world in one of two ways, by human insight or by conflicts and catastrophes of a magnitude that left humanity no other choice. We are at such a juncture.

Nobody will ever win the battle of the sexes. There is too much fraternizing with the enemy.

When statesmen want to gain time, they offer to talk.

Corrupt politicians make the other ten percent look bad.

Can governmental orders be invented from scratch by intelligent thinkers, or is the range of choice limited by underlying organic and cultural realities (the Burkean view)?

What distinguishes Sun Tzu from Western writers on strategy is the emphasis on the psychological and political elements over the purely military.

A Harvard study has shown that in fifteen cases in history where a rising and an established power interacted, ten ended in war.

George Bernard Shaw: There are two tragedies in life. One is to lose your heart’s desire. The other is to gain it.

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

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

Where is the Life we have lost in living? Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?

The task of the leader is to get his people from where they are to where they have not been.

They use force, to make you do, what the deciders, have decided you must do.

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.