“Intellectuals analyze the operations of international systems; statesmen build them.”

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)

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.

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.

It hinders the creative work of the mind if the intellect examines too closely the ideas as they pour in.

In the case of a creative mind, it seems to me, the intellect has withdrawn its watchers from the gates, and the ideas rush in pell-mell and only then does it review and inspect the multitudes.

I think there’s a natural system in your own head about how much violence the scene warrants. It’s not an intellectual process, it’s an instinctive process.

Some other faculty than the intellect is necessary for the apprehension of reality.

To label me an intellectual is a misunderstanding of what that is.

I would not ever try to be a show intellectual, which I was accused of doing a while on ABC. I thought you were supposed to read the guests’ books.

A film engages you emotionally and intellectually.

Intuition is a method of feeling one’s way intellectually into the inner heart of a thing to locate what is unique and inexpressible in it.