“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.

Chinese thinkers developed strategic thought that placed a premium on victory through psychological advantage and preached the avoidance of direct conflict.

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

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

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.

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.

Did you know that true love asks for nothing?

LIBERTY! FREEDOM! DEMOCRACY! True anyhow no matter how many Liars use those words.

That one true heart was left behind! What feeling do we ever find, to equal among human kind, a dog’s fidelity!

Go home and write / a page tonight. / And let that page come out of you – / Then, it will be true.

Language is courage: the ability to conceive a thought, to speak it, and by doing so to make it true.

Only a fool permits the letter of the law to override the spirit in the heart. Do not let a piece of paper stand in the way of true love and headlines.

If you can learn to use your mind as well as your powder puff, you will become more truly beautiful.