“Self-governed nations do not fill their neighbor states with spies.”

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.

It is one of history’s ironies that Communism, advertised as a classless society, tended to breed a privileged class of feudal proportions.

If chess is about the decisive battle, wei qi is about the protracted campaign. The chess player aims for total victory. The wei qi player seeks relative advantage.

Politicians are like dogs, Their life expectancy is too short for a commitment to be bearable

in international affairs a reputation for reliability is a more important asset than demonstrations of tactical cleverness.

Later I learned to improve my forecasting—if necessary by asking the visitor in advance what subjects he intended to raise with Nixon.

Behind the slogans lay an intellectual vacuum.

order without freedom, even if sustained by momentary exaltation, eventually creates its own counterpoise; yet freedom cannot be secured or sustained without a framework of order to keep the peace.

There can’t be a crisis next week, my schedule is already full.

The goal of the tribute system was to foster deference, not to extract economic benefit or to dominate foreign societies militarily.

All those who seek to destroy the liberties of a democratic nation ought to know that war is the surest and shortest means to accomplish it.

The job, of course, will never be finished. For a nation, as for an individual, education is a perpetually unfinished journey, a continuing process of discovery.

Peace is not a relationship of nations. It is a condition of mind brought about by a serenity of soul. Peace is not merely the absence of war. It is also a state of mind. Lasting peace can come only to peaceful people.

The aim of socialism is not only to abolish the present division of mankind into smaller states and all-national isolation, not only to bring the nations closer to each other, but also to merge them.

The United Nations continues to sense as the forum where nations whose interests clash may lay their cases before world opinion.

In a nation of millions and a world of billions, the individual is still the first and basic agent of change.

I am going to build the kind of nation that President Roosevelt hoped for, President Truman worked for, and President Kennedy died for.

No national sovereignty rules in outer space. Those who venture there go as envoys of the entire human race. Their quest, therefore, must be for all mankind, and what they find should belong to all mankind.