“The state is a fragile organization, and the statesman does not have the moral right to risk its survival on ethical restraint.”

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)

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

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

I don’t really consider this a political issue, I consider it to be a moral issue.

One succeeds in obtaining an equivalent production at a lower price by improving the arts, trades and agriculture and by developing the physical and moral qualities of workers, farmers and craftsmen.

Every nation has a moral obligation to safeguard the future.

I may do some good before I am dead–be a sort of success as a frightful example of what not to do; and so illustrate a moral story.

I saw that all beings are fated to happiness: action is not life, but a way of wasting some force, an enervation. Morality is the weakness of the brain.

I don’t think the people of the slave states will ever consider the subject of slavery in its true light till some other argument is resorted to other than moral persuasion.

Science does not have a moral dimension. It is like a knife. If you give it to a surgeon or a murderer, each will use it differently.

You can’t, in sound morals, condemn a man for taking care of his own integrity. It is his clear duty.