“Because complexity inhibits flexibility, early choices are especially crucial.”

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.

Covert action should not be confused with missionary work.

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.

I like girls that are chilled out, that dont really care, that are just cool

You can’t know too much, but you can say too much.

Eating disorders are serious mental illnesses, not lifestyle choices.

In the face of unjust criticism we can become bitter or better; upset or understanding; hostile or humble; furious or forgiving.

I’m a healthy eater, but I don’t consider Chick-fil-A fast food.

A symbol is an important thing. That is why we chose an Aztec eagle. It gives pride. When people see it they know it means dignity.

The true poet has no choice of material. The material plainly chooses him, not he it.

When you choose the behaviour, you choose the consequence.